The connections between the late industrialist and Soviet agent Armand Hammer and the Gore family run long and deep -- and they continue to haunt Al Gore Jr.

Why should anyone care, at this late date, about Vice President Al Gore's relationship with philanthropist-industrialist Armand Hammer, a wealthy, globe-trotting dabbler in diplomacy who died eight years ago? Well, of course, there is the small matter that Hammer was a top-shelf Soviet agent, but he might not have mentioned that to Gore.

And there's more. "Al Gore's relationship to the late Armand Hammer and Occidental Petroleum is important for many reasons" according to Charles Lewis, director of the Center for Public Integrity and author of The Buying of the President 2000. Lewis tells Insight: "There is no U.S. company that Gore is closer to, financially or socially, than Occidental, one of the most controversial in America. It was Occidental, via Hooker Chemical, that brought us Love Canal in the 1970s. The configuration of the vice president, Al `Earth in the Balance' Gore, with an oil company is more than a little surprising"

Does this mean that Gore's highly touted environmentalism is tainted with oil? Actually oil, coal and zinc, but the biggest taint was Hammer himself. It's a matter about which the vice president is more than a little sensitive.

The experience of Bob Zelnick, a veteran ABC News correspondent, might be instructive to anyone delving into the links. Zelnick was warned off from reporting the Hammer-Gore connection when he commenced writing his book, Gore, A Political Life. Zelnick was told in no uncertain terms by Gore staffers that the vice president would "personally resent" intrusions by the reporter into his family affairs and that Gore was "extremely sensitive" about the Hammer connection. But the reporter pursued his subject despite resistance by the Gore camp. Then, with the book nearing completion, he was told by ABC that unless he dropped the project his newscasting contract would not be renewed.

Such an ultimatum is extraordinarily rare; usually, media employers are pleased when one of their own becomes an author -- as a result they benefit by association. Instead, Zelnick not only was warned off but was fired when he refused to cave.

The reason for ABC's action, Zelnick was told in a memo from his boss, David Westin, was that the network could be "held up to ridicule that our reporting is influenced by views you/we have formed about the individual covered." This was a smoke screen that could be dispersed quicker than you could say "Sam Donaldson," Zelnick decided, knowing that ABC's Donaldson had written and commented extensively about individuals he covered. Believing that the real reason was ideological, Zelnick left ABC for academe.

After all that fuss, Zelnick presented a passable account of the Gore-Hammer relationship but gave credit for the material mainly to Edward Jay Epstein's Dossier: The Secret History of Armand Hammer. The connections revealed by Epstein include Hammer's cultivation of Albert Gore Sr., a fiddle-playing hill-country tobacco farmer of grand ambition who rose to become an influential U.S. senator from Tennessee.

The elder Gore made many a mark upon the American landscape in the course of his career; he was a kingpin in the establishment of the mighty Tennessee Valley Authority, or TVA, effort to socialize electrical power and a sponsor of the $50 billion National Highway Defense Act of 1956, the largest public-works project ever undertaken. He initially acquired substantial wealth as Hammer's partner in the cattle business.

Zelnick notes that, while receiving prize Angus stock from Hammer on the one hand, Gore Sr. at the same time auctioned off portions of his herd -- reportedly at outrageously high prices -- to lobbyists and others who wanted his attention. Sometimes, according to local accounts, purchasers didn't even bother to pick up the livestock they had bought. The author quotes former Tennessee Gov. Ned McWherter, a staunch Gore ally: "I've sold some Angus in my time, too, but I never got the kind of prices for my cattle that the Gores got for theirs"

According to scholars who have reviewed Gore Sr.'s archived letters at the University of Tennessee, the senator did many favors for Hammer over the years, intervening when U.S. policies conflicted with Hammer's international wheeler-dealing. "Through the 1950s and well into the following decade, Hammer counted on Gore as his principal link to the Democratic congressional leadership, and to defend his economic interests" writes Zelnick.

Another source familiar with Hammer, Neil Lyndon, a former personal assistant who helped compile the last in a string of authorized and, critics say, largely fictive biographies or autobiographies of Hammer, says the younger Gore and Hammer engaged in a "profound and prolonged involvement" as social and political cronies. Lyndon credits Gore Sr. with arranging the meeting that propelled puny Occidental Petroleum from a tiny holding with two wells into a major player.

"As [a member] of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Gore [Sr.] used his influence on the U.S. ambassador in Libya to arrange a meeting between Hammer and King Idris," then ruler of Libya. Lyndon says Hammer bribed the old king and a few ministers with slightly more than $5 million and gained a concession that ultimately would yield $7.5 billion per year in oil revenues. "Al Gore Sr. was at Hammer's side on the day he paraded King Idris up a red carpet laid on the desert to open the new field"

It was on advice from Sen. Gore that President Kennedy appointed Hammer as an economic emissary of the Commerce Department and sent him to the United Kingdom, France, West Germany, Italy, Libya, India, Japan and the Soviet Union. This was going on even as Hammer devoted no small amount of energy to his clandestine role as a Soviet agent, shuffling money back and forth between Russia and the United States.

Was the U.S. intelligence community asleep at the wheel? Actually, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover had been observing Hammer's operations since the 1920s and was well-aware of his role as a Soviet agent, but Hoover also was aware of the political realities. During the Franklin Roosevelt administration, when Hoover was gathering power and building the FBI into a first-class investigative agency, Hammer was all but invulnerable due to close ties as a White House regular and benefactor of Eleanor Roosevelt. Later, Gore Sr. chaired the Senate committee overseeing FBI activities. Through Gore and other top Washington connections, Hammer continued to checkmate Hoover.

"Hammer was involved in any number of dubious dealings all over the world" Lewis tells Insight. "He was personally close to both Al Jr. and his father, who was paid $500,000 by Occidental upon losing his Senate seat." In fact, as president of Occidental's Island Creek coal division and a member of Occidental's board of directors, Gore Sr.'s salary was reported as $750,000 per year back in the days when three-quarters of a million dollars was real money. Island Creek was at the time the third-largest coal producer in the United States.

Once free of Hammer's payroll, Lyndon tore a fairly large chunk out of the hand that had fed him, terming his former boss "one of the [last] century's most sinister figures" as well as "the godfather of American corruption" who "bribed and suborned elected representatives at all levels of American life, from city assemblymen and mayors to presidents." Lyndon said in an article in London's Sunday Review that Hammer liked to claim he had Gore Sr. "in my back pocket" patting his wallet with a chuckle.

During the time he worked for Hammer, authorized biographer Lyndon says, Gore Jr. often dined with his father's patron in the company of Occidental's "lobbyists and fixers who, on Hammer's behest, hosed tens of millions of dollars in bribes and favors into the political world." As for Gore's orchestration of VIP treatment for Hammer during the Bush inauguration, Lyndon asks: "Why did Gore Jr. allow himself to be so closely embroiled in a compromising connection with such an unalloyed crook? He had little choice. He inherited from his father the mantle of being Hammer's principal boy in Washington. Gore's father effectively delivered his son into Armand Hammer's back pocket."

That would be an example of the more forthright ways that Hammer did business with politicians. He also apparently was quite comfortable with covert dealings. In 1972, one of his operatives provided $54,000 in laundered $100 bills to Nixon fund-raiser Maurice Stans, a maneuver that resulted in Hammer's conviction on three counts of making illegal campaign contributions. President Bush pardoned him in 1989 for that lapse in covering his tracks.

Earlier, Gore Jr. engineered Hammer into a section reserved for senators at Ronald Reagan's 1981 inauguration. Reagan had been warned that Hammer was a Soviet agent and ignored Hammer's attempts to greet him. And Reagan became one of the few presidents who evaded Hammer's inroads, though he couldn't totally ignore the philanthropist's contributions to causes such as Nancy Reagan's White House redecoration fund. He did not grant Hammer's persistent pleas for a pardon for the Watergate Era misdemeanor convictions, and he didn't appoint Hammer to any prestigious boards or committees. But Reagan did provide some cagey recognition in a note allowing that he valued Hammer's "insights on our policy toward the Soviet Union."

It would seem that Reagan was well-aware that he was thanking the fox for advice on protecting the hen-house. Sources tell Insight that, in the 1980s, then-president Reagan asked international journalist Arnaud de Borchgrave about Hammer at a dinner in Los Angeles. "Reagan had just read Arnaud's book, The Spike, containing descriptions of the different types of Soviet agents" according to one of the sources familiar with the story. "Arnaud described Hammer as a Soviet agent of influence. Reagan said, `I've known that, but I wanted to get it from somebody who really knows.'"

Over the years, Hammer's family and corporations gained influence by contributing to the max to Gore Jr.'s campaigns, and the pair appeared together in several national and international events, such as the gathering of Physicians Against Nuclear War in Moscow in 1987. From the time Gore became a vice-presidential candidate, Occidental has given more than $470,000 to various Democratic committees and causes, according to Lewis in The Buying of the President 2000. Ray Irani, current Occidental chief executive officer, dropped $100,000 in soft money into Democratic coffers in 1996 alone. Critics suggest that his generosity may have been prompted by, or at least encouraged during, a White House visit a few days earlier that included an "overnight" in the Lincoln Bedroom.

During the 25 years that Gore Jr. has leased the right to mine zinc on his property along the Caney Fork River outside Carthage, Tenn., he has earned more than $450,000. The land and mineral rights were acquired by Gore Sr. from Hammer under terms described as "highly favorable." The lease payment of $227 per acre was quite a bit higher than the established Occidental rate of $30 an acre in that area. Occidental never actually mined the property but paid Gore $190,000 altogether before selling the lease, which since has changed hands several times, shifting around the right to pay Gore.

Gore maintains that there is nothing improper about the family's relationship with Occidental or the negotiated sale of mineral rights. As for current Occidental stock held by the family, Gore says it is an estate holding consisting of his late father's assets over which he exercises no control. "According to his will, that [Occidental stock] was put into a trust fund to benefit my mother for the remainder of her life, and I was named executor of his will" Gore said during a rare press conference in Tennessee.

It doesn't seem unreasonable to suggest that Gore, an heir, has considerable interest in Occidental's success. And there is at least the appearance of conflict. Has there been a quid pro quo? "Most Americans don't know that Occidental tripled its domestic oil reserves overnight because of a historic reinventing-government decision announced by Vice President Gore," Lewis tells Insight. "Oil companies have been lusting after the Elk Hills land in California for 70 years, but it was not until Bill Clinton and Al Gore that it was opened up, with Occidental the high bidder."

Gore has taken some heat for the Elk Hills sale, which boosted the value of Occidental stock by 10 percent. That 47,000-acre deal, tripling the size of Occidental's petroleum reserves in the United States, is said to be the largest sale of U.S. assets ever. The land had been held as an oil reserve for the U.S. Navy since 1912. The environmental review for the sale was conducted by ICF Kaiser, on whose board sits noted wheeler-dealer Tony Coelho, now Gore's campaign manager.

No evidence of impropriety in the conduct of the sale has emerged, and Occidental is said to have paid $4 billion, about twice what Congress thought would be harvested from the sale.

"I am not suggesting that Al Gore is closer to oil companies than George Bush" Lewis insists, "but I do think the vice president should have to answer questions. `What did he know and when did he know it?' regarding the intricacies of various concessions made to Occidental since 1993. Why hasn't he released his appointment calendars and phone-log records, as Texas Gov. George W. Bush has done? Why doesn't the Energy Department release the bidding information surrounding the Elk Hills decision? There is no excuse that they haven't."

Lewis' CPI, a group of investigative reporters, has had a Freedom of Information Act request on the Elk Hills deal pending for months. The core elements of the request recently were denied and are on appeal.

Among more recent interactions with Clinton-Gore, Occidental lobbied vigorously for a $1.6 billion military-aid package to Colombia that had administration backing. Occidental operates Colombia's second-largest oil field in a country plagued by guerrilla warfare and narcoterrorism. The company also has been in conflict with the U'wa Indians, a tribe whose official lands in Colombia border a major drilling site that Occidental believes could yield 1.5 billion barrels of oil.

Gore must shudder at the mention of the U'wa claim that the site is on their ancestral lands and that oil is "the blood of Mother Earth" The U'wa generated a good deal of publicity for their cause in 1995 when they threatened mass suicide if drilling plans went ahead. All 5,000 of them would step off a 1,400-foot cliff, they said. The Colombian government has been fairly assertive in protecting Occidental's multibillion-dollar operation and will receive 25 percent of any profits resulting from the major find that is expected there.

In the days when Hammer was around, reporter James Cook asserts, Marxist guerrillas simply were bought off. "Hammer gave them $3 million to protect" Occidental's pipeline in Colombia. Today, the firm also pays the Colombian military to maintain a base near the site.

A number of environmentalist groups have been on Gore's case about the U'wa deal. They recently placed an advertisement in the West Coast edition of the New York Times asking: "Who is Al Gore? Environmental champion or petroleum politician?" Protesters are beginning to write to Gore "as the purported environmental candidate" and ask that he exert pressure on Occidental to stop its work in U'wa territory.

Another Gore-Occidental connection, mentioned by Lewis early in our talks, is found in the Love Canal toxic-waste tragedy. Gore, who claimed to have unearthed the scandal, hasn't been overly forthcoming about ownership of Hooker Chemical Co., the firm that paid millions of dollars in fines for polluting Love Canal. Hooker was a subsidiary of Occidental, purchased by Hammer in 1969. At that time, insider Gore Sr. took advantage of a stock offer, well below market value, and scarfed up thousands of shares of Hooker at $150 per.

Al Gore Jr. is of course heir to all of this, and if he ever again holds a realpress conference, say critics, he just might be asked about it.

Logged

All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately

I was puzzled at how often you are referred to on the Internet as "Al Arm-and-Hammer Gore." The only association that I had to "Arm and Hammer" was to "Arm & Hammer" brand baking soda, and the connection between you and baking soda was not apparent.

And so I did a little research and came up with the following explanation, whose accuracy I invite you to comment upon.

The Arm & Hammer Baking Soda logo, to begin, gives the impression of being irrelevant (though it will prove not to be so entirely) to the question of the origin and meaning of the appellation "Al Arm-and-Hammer Gore." The logo is owned by Church & Dwight Co., Inc., which explains it as follows:THE HISTORY OF THE ARM AND HAMMER® TRADEMARK

The ARM & HAMMER symbol was first used in the early 1860’s by James A. Church, the son of Dr. Austin Church, one of the founders of our business. James A. Church operated a spice and mustard business known as the Vulcan Spice Mills. In Roman mythology, Vulcan, the god of fire, was especially skilled in fashioning ornaments and arms for the gods and heroes. The ARM & HAMMER symbol, therefore, represented the arm of Vulcan with hammer in hand about to descend on an anvil. Church & Dwight, Company Information, History of the Logo, www.churchdwight.com/company/company_information.htm

As the above does not appear helpful, we pass on to the observation that the Arm and Hammer symbol does not originate with the Church family business, but rather has been widely used by others for other purposes. Traditionally, the Arm and Hammer image symbolizes manufacturing or industry, as for example on Wisconsin's Coat of Arms and State Flag:

In Lewisburg, Ohio in 1932, an Arm and Hammer rubber stamp was used to cancel postage ( www.stuartkatz.com/fancycovers3.htm ), the symbol presumably employed here in its reference to manufacturing or industry.

To approach closer to the point, the symbol was also adopted by the American Socialist Labor Party, a precursor of the American Communist Party. Why should Socialists or Communists have been drawn to the arm and hammer? One imagines primarily because of its association with labor; however, the image may also carry a suggestion of militancy, of a powerful arm able to smash opposition.

We do find unmistakable confirmation, however, in the New York newspaper, Weekly People, whose 10-Apr-1937 issue sported the following masthead

and whose second page was headed by

Lest we be misled by its name into believing that the Socialist Labor Party was Socialist rather than Communist, let us note that:

on the pages of the Weekly People writers call each other "Comrade" rather than "Mr,"they admit to singing the International at their meetings,they tie their program to their logo by depicting the overcoming of opposition with the words "Only by the hammer-stroke of proletarian revolution can that wall be laid low" (p. 3), they pepper their writing with such galvanizing slogans as "CAPITALISM MUST BE DESTROYED!" (p.2), they disclose that their Party's "propaganda is not alone to educate, it is to organize the working class for the conquest of power, for the complete overthrow of capitalism," andto the left of their masthead they emblazon this quotation:The workers ought to inscribe on their banner the revolutionary watchword, "Abolition of the wage system!"

—MARX.

So far, then, the thread that we are following has taken us from the Arm and Hammer symbol to Communism. Below, the thread will lead us on to a famous individual.

Armand Hammer

And that famous individual is Armand Hammer.

Àðìàíä Õàììåð

What's in a name?

How is Armand Hammer related to the image of the Arm and Hammer? Most simply — believe it or not — that the name "Armand Hammer" was chosen by his father, Dr Julius Hammer, because it is a contraction of "Arm and Hammer": Dr Julius Hammer

On May 21, 1898, Julius's first son was born, and he proudly named him Armand Hammer. He told friends that he had named him after the symbol of the Socialist Labor Party (and decades later, Armand would use the arm-and-hammer insignia as the flag on his yacht). Edward Jay Epstein, Dossier: The secret history of Armand Hammer, Random House, New York, 1996, p. 35.

Julius Hammer's manner of choosing his name for his son is made credible by the recognition that Julius was not merely a believer in Communism, he was a dedicated Bolshevik aparatchik. A Ukrainian Jew born in Odessa in 1874, he did not emigrate to the United States until the age of sixteen. Biographer Epstein portrays his meeting Lenin at the Seventh Congress of the Second International in Stuttgart, Germany in 1907 as a seminal experience, though Julius's enthusiasm for Communism can be traced back to at least 1892 when he joined the Socialist Labor Party at the age of 18.By the time the Stuttgart conference ended, Dr Julius Hammer had become part of the elite underground cadre that Lenin would depend on to change the world. This conspiratorial movement went a step beyond starry-eyed idealism and fiery rhetorical disputes about the nature of society. It sought to create the concrete means — networks of agents, sources of funds, secure communications, internal discipline — to bring about the desired world revolution. It was predicated on the Leninist principle that any means employed, no matter how much they diverged from Marxist ideology, were justified by the ends.

Julius Hammer returned to New York that October with a solid commitment to the socialist cause. He would help lay the groundwork for Lenin's revolutionary apparatus in America. Edward Jay Epstein, Dossier: The secret history of Armand Hammer, Random House, New York, 1996, p. 36-37.

To a Ukrainian Jew finding himself in the New World, what could have been more natural than to work to bestow upon America the same gift of Jewish Conquest that his coreligionists had recently bestowed upon the Slavic lands? This may have been a not uncommon aspiration among emigré Ukrainian Jews, as we have already seen one dedicating his life toward just this worthwhile goal in the case of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, whom I wrote to you about in my letter of 01-Nov-2000 (to which I have not yet received your reply, nor indeed to any of the twelve letters that I have sent you). And to such a committed Bolshevik as Julius Hammer, what could have been more natural than to name his son after the symbol which represented the cause to which he had dedicated his life (with the removal of a space offering a camouflage to unsympathetic eyes)?

Armand Hammer bungled his budding career as an abortionist

As Dr Julius Hammer's implementation of a Bolshevik conquest of the United States absorbed the bulk of his energies, it is difficult to understand how he could have simultaneously developed a thriving and lucrative medical practice, as is sometimes claimed, and it is possible to hypothesize that what time he did allocate to his practice was given to performing abortions, decidedly illegal at that time, and for that reason highly remunerative. It is possible also to speculate that Armand Hammer, then a medical student at Columbia University, followed in his father's footsteps by performing abortions himself, unsupervised.

The outstanding piece of evidence in this department is that at the Hammer home on 05-Jul-1919, medical student Armand Hammer, on his own, performed an abortion on Marie Oganesoff, 33-year-old wife of a Russian diplomat, who bled to death afterward, whereupon Dr Julius Hammer decided that he would try to beat the rap by saying that he himself had found it necessary to perform the abortion in order to save the woman's life. The jury believed the story only up to the point that Dr Julius Hammer had been the abortionist, and convicted him of first-degree manslaughter. The judge sentenced Julius to three and one half to twelve years at hard labor in Sing Sing, which is the occasion of Edward Jay Epstein beginning Chapter One of his biography of Armand Hammer with the words:On September 18, 1920, Julius Hammer entered Sing Sing State Prison, in manacles and leg irons, as prisoner 71516. He stood naked while clerks examined his body for scars and other identifying marks. They found none. The prison's entry blotter describes him as "age 46, 5 foot 11 inches, 195 pounds, Hebrew religion." Edward Jay Epstein, Dossier: The secret history of Armand Hammer, Random House, New York, 1996, p. 33.

An intimation of things to come — the trial of Dr Julius Hammer had been interrupted by the accusation that William Cope, a public relations man employed by Julius, had tried to bribe a juror.

Armand was if anything even more enthralled with Lenin in 1921 than his father had been in 1907:He was not only flattered by the attention of a world leader, but he was, as he confided years later to his tape-recorded diary, "captivated" by the force of Lenin's personality. "If Lenin had told [me] to jump out the window," Hammer reflected, "[I ] probably would have done it." He was now Lenin's man. Edward Jay Epstein, Dossier: The secret history of Armand Hammer, Random House, New York, 1996, p. 62. Square-bracketed material was in the original.

Upon Armand's first visit to the Moscow in 1921, he placed the Hammer family US commercial interests at the disposal of Felix Dzerzhinski, head of the dreaded Cheka, to be employed as a front for the Kremlin, and in return was raised from insignificance to power, as is evidenced by the sum of money that was immediately handed him for disbursement, from which it can be seen that he began to function not merely as some sort of good-will ambassador between the United States and the Soviet Union, but rather as an agent of subversion:Hammer was given $75,000 to secretly take back with him to New York. This money, which would be the equivalent of $600,000 today, was to be distributed there to underground agents of the Comintern. Hammer thus demonstrated that he and his father were "convinced Communists and sincere comrades," as Reinstein wrote in his report. Edward Jay Epstein, Dossier: The secret history of Armand Hammer, Random House, New York, 1996, p. 64.

When Armand returned to New York from that first visit to Russia in 1921, it was in noticeably better-cut suits, and with a diamond pin in his tie. And neither was Armand Hammer's service to the Kremlin brief, or followed by any weakening of allegiance over the course of his life:Hammer, who died in 1990 aged 92, was one of the century's most sinister figures. Kremlin papers released after the collapse of the USSR and exhaustively researched by Ed Epstein in his book Dossier prove that, from the Bolshevik revolution of 1917 to the fall of the Berlin Wall, Hammer was a lifelong "agent of influence" of the Soviet Politburo and an accomplice of every Russian leader from Lenin to Gorbachev. Neil Lyndon, How Mr Clean got his hands dirty, Sunday Telegraph (London), 01-Nov-1998,www.freerepublic.com/forum/a38c4a8fd6308.htm

Those wishing to poke fun at the origin of his name, or wishing to underline his Communist connections, today sometimes refer to him not as "Armand Hammer" but as "Arm and Hammer" or as "Armand Hammer and Sickle."

How Armand Hammer learned to stop worrying and love the Cheka

Armand Hammer lived in Moscow from 1922 to 1929. Father Dr Julius Hammer won early release from Sing Sing on the argument that he was needed to facilitate trade deals with Russia, and moved there with his wife, Rose, and Armand's brother, Victor. They all lived in Brown House — a palatial, thirty-room mansion in the heart of Moscow — and in which they had the assistance of eight servants, two chauffeurs, and other help as it was needed, and where they entertained in grand style.

When it came to business dealings, Armand took readily to Soviet methods. He described with admiration how Cheka head Dzerzhinski got the Ural trains to run on time — when a train that was to pick him up did not arrive promptly, Dzerzhinski went to the local administrative center, ordered the chief administrator and his assistant to step forward, and had them shot in the courtyard. To get his asbestos mine working, Armand had used "the harshest methods available," and when workers on short rations were on the verge of rioting, he called in the Cheka, and in short order "the strike was suppressed and the other problems were temporarily alleviated. Hammer was enormously impressed by the cold-blooded efficiency of the Cheka and of its chief, Feliks Dzerzhinski" (Epstein, 1996, p. 83). When a train with several cars of food for Hammer's mine workers was delayed by a station commandant demanding a bribe, Hammer called in the Cheka who shot the commandant after a brief inquiry. The power of being able to kill his way to getting what he wanted went to Armand Hammer's head:Hammer no longer saw himself as the powerless and isolated young man kept cowering on a ship by a British official. Now he depicted himself as someone with awesome connections, someone to be feared rather than trifled with, and someone who, like Dzerzhinski himself, could destroy a petty official who abused him. It was a story he would tell over and over again, with slight variations, throughout his career. Edward Jay Epstein, Dossier: The secret history of Armand Hammer, Random House, New York, 1996, p. 84.

After Dr Julius Hammer talked Trotsky (Lev Bronstein) into allowing him and Armand — instead of Isaac Hoorgin — to be the ones to try to induce Ford to build a tractor factory in Russia, "Hoorgin's body was found weighted down with chains in Lake George in upstate New York" (Epstein, 1996, p. 98).

Did Armand Hammer intervene to protect his son, Julias, from standing trial for murder?

Below is an excerpt from a 12-Sep-1959 letter written by an unidentified individual to the "Hon. John Edgar Hoover" which begins "Dear John." The subject is Julian Hammer, son of Armand Hammer, and relies on a 11-Sep-1959 article in the Los Angeles Herald and Express which is reproduced on the FBI site, but is illegible. The FBI elaborates later that Julian's killing of his friend had been over a "gambling debt." The relevance to our discussion is the possibility that Armand Hammer intervened to protect his son from standing trial for murder, which possibility adds further to our impression that Armand Hammer was skilled in subverting justice:This young Hammer killed a man in 1955 in a drunken brawl, and never came to trial probably because his father was financially able to persuade someone that his action was in self defense. Now he comes along and tries again to kill; or threatens to kill.

The enclosed clipping also states he is working on a secret government project for an aircraft company.

It makes no difference to me whether or not he might be a great scientist or engineer, his family background connections and their association in the past with our "Red" enemy, plus the fact that he killed one man and threatened to kill his wife and others, indicate to me that he is "NUTS", and not the type of man to be trusted with federal secrets.

Out of one hundred and seventy plus million U.S. citizens cannot these contractors of federal secret defense weapons find sane people to do the work ... why do they have to risk classified matters to this type of individual. No wonder the enemy can so easily acquire our military secrets. FOIA.FBI, Part 12, p. 27.

Did Armand Hammer try to bribe Congressman Hale Boggs?

The Hooker Chemical Company mentioned below (the same that was responsible for Love Canal, incidentally) was owned by Occidental Petroleum. Representative Hale Boggs, (Democrat, Louisiana, Majority Whip) had spoken against a proposed Foreign Trade Zone in Maine which stood to make Hooker Chemical and Occidental Petroleum a pile of money, even while destroying the domestic oil industry. Let us begin with an FBI summary of Hale Boggs' accusation of attempted bribery that took place on 01-Oct-1968:Congressman Boggs told me that shortly after his return from New Orleans, the President of the Hooker Chemical Company, the General Counsel of the Occidental Petroleum Company, and a third individual, called upon him in his office. Prior to the meeting he said he set up a tape recorder and arranged to have a hidden still picture taken while the meeting was in progress.

At this point in our conversation Congressman Boggs dramatically began to illustrate the manner in which the chairs in his office were arranged, identifying the individual who sat in each chair. He then stated that the President of Hooker Chemical Company advised him point-blank that it was realized that he, Congressman Boggs, needed money for his congressional campaign in Louisiana. Boggs admitted that he, in fact, did need money. This individual then told Boggs all he needed to do was to contact a certain individual (he named this individual), in Louisiana, and any amount of money that Boggs asked for, would be furnished him without question.

Boggs stated he immediately realized, of course, that this was a bribe, and for the purpose of the tape recorder he asked several sharp questions to draw these men out further. He also fully identified them in his own voice, so that proper identification would be picked up by the tape recorder.

After doing all this, Boggs stated he told these individuals, "You bastards are in trouble and I want no part of you." Boggs stated he then left the room, leaving these individuals with very stunned expressions on their faces.

Boggs stated the following day he traveled to Portland, Maine, where he succeeded in completely blocking the actions of the Occidental Petroleum Company. From summary of FBI interview conducted on 11-Oct-1968, in United States Government Memorandum from C. D. DeLoach to Mr. Tolson, dated 11-Oct-1968, FOIA.FBI, Part 8, p. 20.

One might expect that when someone who holds as responsible a position as Majority Whip of the House of Representatives makes an accusation of attempted bribery, and backs that accusation up with a tape recording, that the FBI would immediately start an investigation, the first steps of which might be to transcribe the audiotape that had been made, and to interview all those who had been involved. However, that is not what happened. What happened is that the FBI decided it would not investigate unless ordered to do so by the Department of Justice:ACTION:It is suggested that the General Investigative Division prepare a letter to the Department, giving a brief recital of the above-mentioned facts and indicating that the FBI is taking no action unless advised to the contrary by the Department. It, of course, could be that this entire matter is somewhat of a political set-up; consequently we should not be caught in the middle of it. End of the DeLoach to Tolson memorandum of 11-Oct-1968, FOIA.FBI, Part 8, p. 21.

My letter to you of October 14, 1968, contained information furnished to this Bureau by Congressman Boggs concerning an offer of a bribe made to him at a meeting in his office attended by representatives of Occidental Petroleum Company and Hooker Chemical Company. As stated in that letter, no action is being taken by the FBI concerning the information furnished by Congressman Boggs unless contrary advice is received from the Department of Justice. [...]

NOTE: This communication and the news article are being furnished to the Attorney General so it is absolutely clear to him that the FBI is not conducting any investigation of Congressman Boggs' allegations that a bribe in the form of unlimited campaign funds was offered to him. Director FBI to Attorney General, 14-Oct-1968, FOIA.FBI, Part 8, p. 25.

Possibly stunned that no investigation was being conducted, Boggs sent the FBI the following urgent request:Dear Mr. Hoover:

I am herewith formally requesting a full, complete and intensive investigation of an attempt to bribe me by the Occidental Petroleum Corporation and its agents.

I charge specifically a violation of Title 18, Section 201 of the United States Code annotated.

The following day, 17-Oct-1968 — sixteen days after the attempted bribe took place — the Deputy Assistant Attorney General Nathaniel E. Kossack finally ordered the FBI to conduct an investigation (FOIA.FBI, Part 8 p. 46). The FBI's response was, of course, that it would conduct an investigation, but stressed in its internal memos that only mature agents were to be entrusted with the case (FBI agents apparently being categorizable into mature and immature):WFO is being instructed to assign this case to mature and experienced Special Agents and it will be closely supervised. (p. 34) The Bureau has instructed that this investigation be handled by mature and experienced agents. (p. 40) For the information of New Orleans and New York, the Bureau has instructed that this investigation be assigned to experienced and mature agents and is to receive daily expeditious attention. (p. 106) FOIA.FBI, Part 8, bold emphasis added. WFO is Washington Field Office. The first statement above appears to have been written by the FBI Director on 24-Oct-1968; who wrote the others, or when, is unclear.

What is a "mature" FBI agent? Does the FBI have "immature" agents? My guess is that the FBI does have immature agents. An immature agent is a starry-eyed youngster who joins the FBI with the idealized and impractical view that the FBI is out to get the bad guys, and the more highly placed the bad guys are, the better. The "maturity" that experience brings to an agent over the years is the recognition that this idealistic view has to be tempered somewhat by the awareness that some bad guys are not to be touched. Perhaps what the mature agent can be counted upon to have the good sense to do, then, is to guarantee the termination of certain investigations on the grounds of insufficient evidence.

Who can keep himself from entertaining such a hypothesis upon seeing the FBI declining to investigate what appears to be a strong case, and when commanded to investigate by the Department of Justice, expressing concern that the investigation be entrusted only to "mature" agents? The hypothesis certainly is not weakened by seeing FBI bungling over the years on other matters, right up to today. The hypothesis will become still easier to entertain after reading evidence farther below that the FBI did have a hands-off policy with regard to Armand Hammer.

The FBI investigation of the Boggs attempted bribery that does follow appears leisurely. The FBI finally accepts delivery of Boggs' audiotape on 23-Oct-1968, twenty-two days after the attempted bribery (FOIA.FBI, Part 8, p. 69). When the FBI finally listens to the tape, it decides that much of it is unintelligible — wouldn't you know! Furthermore, the Hooker Chemical and Occidental Petroleum representatives have a different recollection of what happened during the meeting. That an assistant of Congressman Boggs was present during the meeting and confirms Boggs' allegation of attempted bribery (see pp. 87, 90, 93, 94 in FOIA.FBI, Part 8) does not appear to impress the FBI. Because of insufficient evidence, the FBI says, the investigation is terminated.

Congressman Boggs did tear several holes in the net that he cast, which let Armand Hammer swim through and escape:

Boggs did not take time to install a high-fidelity recording system. He used a dictaphone. As it can be hard to tell who is speaking in an audiotape, a video camera would have been a helpful addition. Furthermore, if Boggs had made a video of the attempted bribery, he could have released it for broadcast to the entire nation, and he wouldn't have needed the FBI.

If Boggs had been aware that the FBI might be protecting Armand Hammer, and that it might degrade into unintelligibility any audiotape placed in its hands which inculpated Armand Hammer, then Boggs would not have handed over his tape to the FBI, but rather would have asked that it be both duplicated and transcribed by some more trustworthy agency.

Boggs should have kept his indignation under control, and not burst out with his accusation against the Hooker-Occidental executives until he had elicited clearer statements of purpose from them.

Had Boggs actually accepted (for purposes of accumulating evidence) large campaign contributions from Hooker and Occidental, they would not later be able to deny that they were contributors to his campaign.

Immediately after Boggs had accused Hooker and Occidental executives of attempting to bribe him, he regretted his outburst, felt remorseful at the unpleasantness he had caused, and swung too far in the opposite direction — he decided not to pursue the matter of the attempted bribery — while still continuing to thwart the Hooker-Occidental business plan. In wounding his antagonists without destroying them, Boggs was not mindful of the teachings of Machiavelli, and he paid the price — Armand Hammer came after him with a vengeance, and when Boggs was forced to resume arms, he did so looking like he was on the defensive, and not like the indignant stalwart of righteousness that he had started out to be:Dr. Armand Hammer, chairman of Occidental, issued a statement in Los Angeles denying what he termed "the false and outrageous charges made by Congressman Boggs."

BOGGS stated unfortunately when he did go to the Maine meeting, Occidental Petroleum made statements and insinuations that he had been paid by the major oil companies to take the stand he did against the Occidental application or that he could be bought; therefore, it became a matter of honor that he make the complaint on the bribe attempt to him and pursue it vigorously. FOIA.FBI, Part 8 p. 96.

A review of the key facts indicates that Boggs was in the right. Seeing that a bribe was coming, he took care to tape record the actual bribe, and on top of that to have a witness present. That he did explode with an accusation of attempted bribery during the meeting with Hooker-Occidental executives is confirmed not only by his assistant, but also by the defensive letters (putting their own spin on what happened) that were immediately written by the executives themselves. It does not seem possible that a person who has reached as responsible a position as House Majority Whip would be capable of staging, and tape-recording, and inviting a witness to, his own outburst of an accusation of attempted bribery when no such attempt was taking place. Too bad for Boggs and for justice that his righteousness miscarried; another lucky break for Armand Hammer, if one can count as lucky the receipt of further encouragement to a life of crime.

The FBI was not in a position to launch any major, reputation-destroying investigation of Armand Hammer on the matter of the Boggs allegation. Undoubtedly, Hammer continued to have powerful friends the way he always had who were protecting him from investigation (who these might have been will be discussed below); and if the FBI had failed to investigate Hammer — in depth, that is — for half a century, then this became a reason to never investigate him in depth, because one of the discoveries that any investigation might turn up would be the FBI's ongoing failure to investigate in depth. The practice of leaving any malefactor alone becomes self-perpetuating — he is left alone for the reason that he is left alone.

The story of Hale Boggs bears looking into as possibly illustrative of what happens when an American — without adequate preparation — tussles with a powerful Soviet agent who enjoys the protection of corrupted American institutions. The impression given by the following chilling statement is that it dawns on that righteous American that the corrupted institution is allied with the Soviet agent, he includes the corrupted institution in his indictment, and he finds himself being mauled not only by the Soviet agent, but also by the corrupted institution:When Ralph Nader recently leveled a serious charge against the Justice Department's antitrust policies, Attorney General Mitchell responded by declaring that Nader was having "hallucinations." This followed on the heels of a similar Justice Department retort to charges leveled against J. Edgar Hoover by Congressman Hale Boggs. Boggs, according to the Deputy Attorney General, was "either sick or not in possession of his faculties." Alan M. Dershowitz, Taking liberties: A decade of hard cases, bad laws, and bum raps, Contemporary Books, Chicago and New York, 1988, pp. 44-45.

Did Armand Hammer try to bribe Los Angeles City Council members regarding Pacific Palisades?

On the accusation of bribery alone, the FBI launched six major investigations of Armand, the last of which concerned his secretly transferring $120,000 to Herbert Itkin, a former FBI informant in his employ, to be used to bribe at least one and possibly two members of the Los Angeles City Council in an attempt to influence a vote before the Council that would permit exploratory drilling for oil off the coast of Pacific Palisades, California. Somehow, the investigation was triggered by the receipt of a letter dated 10-Oct-1979 from an agent of the United States Customs Service in Los Angeles.

The investigation was discontinued for — yes, again! — lack of sufficient evidence.

(This incident was briefly described in the MEMORANDUM OF INVESTIGATION/ATTEMPTED BRIBERY; LOS ANGELES CITY COUNCIL MEMBERS of 16-Jul-1980: FOIA.FBI, Part 8, pp. 13-14.)

Armand Hammer did make illegal campaign contributions, and did obstruct justice

In connection with an illegal contribution of $54,000 to Richard Nixon's Committee to Re-elect the President, Armand had arranged for six people, including himself, to lie to FBI agents, mislead a Senate investigation, and create false documentation, providing prosecutors with a solid case for charging Hammer not only with the original illegal contribution, but more importantly with multiple counts of obstruction of justice.

Armand Hammer managed to negotiate a plea-bargain in which he would plead guilty to three counts of making illegal campaign contributions, one secondary gain for him being the prevention of a wider investigation which would have revealed his diversion of millions of dollars of Occidental Petroleum funds that could have led to embezzlement charges.

However, when Hammer next sent judge William B. Jones a 23-page letter stating that he was pleading guilty not because he believed that he was guilty, but only because he was too infirm to endure a trial, the judge ordered the guilty plea withdrawn. Prosecutors then announced that since the terms of the plea bargain had been violated, they would convene a grand jury to indict Hammer on two additional felony charges of obstruction of justice.

Armand in his turn came forward with the dying-man ploy in which he had himself admitted to hospital, and had six medical specialists in the pay of Occidental Petroleum furnish opinions that he was unfit to stand trail. This succeeded in getting prosecutors to again accept his guilty plea to three misdemeanors, which Hammer did deliver this time, but from a wheel chair, his face ashen, his eyes downcast, his body quivering, dozens of wires monitoring his heart trailing to an adjoining room where attendants stood by with an oxygen tent and other emergency paraphernalia. Upon leaving the court room, however, Hammer was blessed with a miraculous recovery, which permitted him to check out of the hospital and bounce into his Occidental Petroleum office the following day.

Reviewing this incident, it is possible to view the U.S. Government as being in a position to give Armand Hammer penitentiary time following convictions for obstruction of justice and embezzlement, but content instead to slap his wrist with misdemeanor convictions.

Armand Hammer understood the value of blackmail

In view of what we know so far, we cannot be surprised that another weapon in Armand Hammer's armamentarium was blackmail, as is evidenced by his attempting the takeover of the First National Bank of Washington, D.C.:Hammer's quest for data that could be used as leverage became almost an end in itself. At one point in the late 1970s, he attempted to widen his access to the records of politicians in financial distress by buying a controlling interest in the First National Bank of Washington, D.C. After spending almost $5 million to buy 5.2 percent of its holding company, Financial General Bancshares, he attempted to persuade a foreign financier who was seeking to do business in the United States to join him in the takeover attempt. The financier could not see the point of the deal. Hammer looked at him as if he were naïve and explained that the bank had outstanding loans to more than one hundred U.S. senators and congressmen. When his prospective partner still failed to see the point, Hammer explained that all these congressional borrowers had submitted statements to the bank that revealed their precise financial status, including their debts, earnings, real estate holdings, and other assets. He suggested that this data would be worth more in terms of influence than the entire investment they would need to make. The financier declined to participate when he realized that Hammer had blackmail in mind. Edward Jay Epstein, Dossier: The secret history of Armand Hammer, Random House, New York, 1996, pp. 321-322.

Despite his sleazy past, Armand Hammer dreamed of a Nobel Prize

In his declining years, Armand took it into his head to win himself a Nobel Peace Prize. However, his attempt to get President Carter to nominate him was met with refusal. Hoping to get Prince Charles to convince Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher to nominate him, he provided Charles with free water-color lessons, and gave $5 million to one of Charles's philanthropic projects, United World College of the American West, which ended up being named not after Prince Charles who had the inspiration, but after the financier who was distributing stolen money in his attempt to buy a Nobel Prize.

Above: Dr. Armand Hammer in front of the Julias and Armand Hammer Health Sciences Center in 1989. "As a P&S graduate who left medicine to become an oil tycoon, Dr. Hammer agreed to provide funds for construction of the Julius and Armand Hammer Health Sciences Center." Photograph, caption, and quote are from the Columbia University web site. (The error "Julias" is in the original caption. "P&S" refers to the College of Physicians and Surgeons).

Armand contributed to the Swedish Academy, hired local public relations specialists to contact the key players in the selection process, offered lucrative deals with Occidental Petroleum to Swedish business leaders, and spent some $5 million buying himself awards and honors that he believed would favorably influence his selection. It was pointed out to him, however, that the Nobel Prize had never been awarded to a convicted criminal, and so he began to agitate for a Presidential pardon for those three misdemeanor charges to which he had pled guilty. In his continuing campaign to paint over his blemishes, Armand gave $5 million to Columbia University in return for its naming its Health Sciences Center after his father and himself.

Armand offered $1.3 million to the Ronald Reagan Library, making him the largest single pledger of funds for the project, but Reagan wouldn't pardon him. He gave $110,000 to the Republican Party's National State Election Committee, but Reagan still wouldn't pardon him. Armand shovelled money right and left, and did finally get from President Bush Senior the pardon that he was seeking, but only after changing the grounds of his request from innocence to compassion. In the end, despite Armand's United World College of the American West contribution, Prince Charles allowed Armand to be god-father to Charles’s firstborn son, Prince William, but declined to support Armand's nomination for the Nobel Prize, and Armand had to fall back on Prime Minister Menachem Begin of Israel to do the job. All his efforts to win the Prize, however, proved futile, although he is said to have lost out in 1989 only to the Dalai Lama.

Did Armand Hammer really finish medical school?

Armand Hammer is widely referred to as "Dr," and we have seen in the Columbia University Health Sciences Center material above that Columbia University itself appears to credit him with a medical degree. Armand's FBI files are strewn with such compelling corroborative statements as the following:The records of the New York State Education Department, Bureau of the Professional Licensure, Medical Division, reflect that subject was born May 21, 1898 at New York City, attended the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, graduating in September 1921, and was licensed as a physician with Medical License #18127 issued on January 31, 1924. His license is currently valid and his office address is listed as 183 West 4th Street, New York City. FOIA.FBI, Part 4, p. 8.

In spite of all this, one occasionally encounters denials that Armand completed his medical studies, as for example: "Not long after his father was arrested, Armand dropped out of medical school. Despite this, he referred to himself as 'Doctor Hammer' for the rest of his life" Charles Thompson and Tony Hays.

I am interested in verifying the claim that Armand Hammer (born 21-May-1898) graduated from Columbia University Medical School on or about 1921.

Armand Hammer is widely credited with having done so; however, one occasionally comes across indications that this is not the case. For example, the InfoPlease biography at

ln.infoplease.com/ipa/A0771924.html

describes Armand's father, Julius, as a "doctor," but does not apply the title "doctor" to Armand, and refers to Armand as having "attended" medical school at Columbia, with no mention of his having graduated. Or, FORTUNE magazine states that "When Armand was 23 and about to graduate with a medical degree from Columbia, Julius sent him to Russia to confer with Lenin."

Confusion exists surrounding Armand Hammer's medical degree even within sources where one would expect none, as illustrated in an FBI report which has him "matriculating in the College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1917," receiving his A.B. degree in 1919, and being awarded a Doctor of Medicine on June 1, 1921 — a somewhat implausible sequence of events. Perhaps we can expect occasional confusion in FBI documents, as they are sometimes little better than an attempt to make sense out of incongruous newspaper reports. This is on p. 44 of

foia.fbi.gov/hammerop/hammerop1.pdf

It would be helpful to have Columbia University clear up this question.

Our records indicated that Armand Hammer attended The College of Physicians & Surgeons from 1917-1921 and received a M.D. Degree on June 17, 1921. He also attended Columbia College and received a B.A. on June 1, 1917.

In an honest world, Columbia University's reply above would be definitive confirmation that Armand Hammer had indeed finished medical school. However, we do not live in an honest world, we live in a venal world. We have just been reviewing evidence that Armand was thoroughly unscrupulous, shrinking neither from bribery nor blackmail, and that in his attempt to secure a Nobel Prize, he spent five million dollars buying himself awards and honors. What we don't know is whether his purchasing of awards and honors included the purchasing of degrees, and we don't know how early in his life such purchasing began.

We do know that completion of Columbia University's Julius and Armand Hammer Health Sciences Center took place during the administration of William J. McGill, President of Columbia University 1970-1980. The year that McGill became President of Columbia University happens to be the same year that he became acquainted with Armand Hammer, being made privy to Armand's Watergate money-laundering problems no later than their second meeting:

MC GILL stated that during 1970 he came across an old University folder containing HAMMER's father's grades from Medical School. He later made an appointment with HAMMER and gave him the folder as a personal gift, knowing that father and son enjoyed a very close relationship. He stated that HAMMER was so overcome by receiving the gift that he "burst into tears" and later invited MC GILL to lunch where HAMMER discussed his "money laundering problems" concerning a contribution he had made to the campaign of former President RICHARD NIXON. FOIA.FBI, Part 7, p. 35.

William McGill handing over a student's scholastic records as a gift may strike some as a violation of the integrity of university records, and as opening the door to their falsification. If Columbia University employees are in the habit of handing out university files as gifts, then how will they be able to know who really graduated and who didn't? Curiously, William McGill doesn't say anything about Armand's own file — did he hand that over too? Did he locate it and allow Armand to inspect it? Did he promise it to Armand after it became as old as Julius's file was when he handed it over (by 1970, Armand's medical school records would have been approaching half a century old)? Wouldn't Armand have said, "Well, while you're handing over my father's file, why don't you give me mine as well?" Wouldn't Armand have wanted photographs of these proofs of his having completed medical school included in the several vanity biographies that he had published about himself?

In other words, the occasion described by McGill to his FBI interviewer was one on which it would have been natural for McGill and Armand to have made reference to Armand's medical-school file, and McGill's failure to mention any such reference between Armand and himself to the FBI interviewer is puzzling, and suggests less that nothing had been said about Armand's file, and more that what had been said was not for public consumption.

Of course for Armand to have been able to claim for the past half century that he was a physician, falsification of Columbia University records would have had to take place around 1921, long before William McGill arrived on the scene in 1970, though McGill's handing over any final remnant of evidence embarrassing to Armand could have taken place around 1970, and might have helped unstop the flow of grateful tears from Armand's eyes and grateful dollars from his pockets.

We know, furthermore, that Armand's largesse did not flow only to Columbia University, but also to William McGill personally — in 1981, Armand put McGill on the Occidental Petroleum Board of Directors. We look forward to the disclosure some day of how much this directorship brought McGill, and whether it was supplemented by other consideration, and how early in their relationship the payment of such consideration started.

In return, we see McGill not only putting the Hammers' names on the Columbia University Health Sciences Center, but performing other favors as well. For example, we see that after Armand was convicted of those illegal campaign contributions we spoke of above, McGill wrote a letter to the sentencing Judge requesting leniency. We also see that when Armand was applying for that Pardon After Completion of Sentence which he viewed as the removal of the final obstacle standing in his path to the Nobel Prize, McGill supplied him with a glowing character reference — the FBI interviewer reported McGill saying that he and Armand had "developed a very close relationship," that Armand was "absolutely straight," that he was "one of the sharpest and most capable businessmen he had ever encountered," that "only two or three people in his life time have made a greater impression on him than Armand Hammer," that students at the Armand Hammer College of the American West "view Hammer as a Saint," and that he "highly recommends applicant be granted pardon" (FOIA.FBI, Part 7, pp. 36-37). That is the sort of service (surely only the tip of the iceberg) that a university president can be hired to perform for an erstwhile professional abortionist, manslaughterer, Communist agent, Cheka worshipper, briber, blackmailer, embezzler, money launderer, and Nobel Peace Prize aspirant.

However much it is asserted that Armand Hammer did earn a medical degree, one may wonder where he would have found the time to do so. During the years when Hammer should have been immersed in his studies, he was beset by several wasting distractions:

Elaborate parties. Buying property already is something of a distraction, but then using it to "give elaborate parties" is very much a distraction: "Also, while in school, he acquired a small house at 183 West 4th Street, in Greenwich Village, New York City, where he was known to give elaborate parties" (FOIA.FBI, Part 1, p. 44).Running a corporation. Armand was joint owner, with his brother, Harry, of the Allied Drug and Chemical company, which the two of them ran. Although most of the claims concerning this company are probably false, the very fact that the claims are made suggests that the company was doing business, and so would have required some attention. Among these claims are that Armand made his first million while still in school (FOIA.FBI, Part 6, p. 19), and that the company brought in "as much as $20,000 daily profit" (FOIA.FBI, Part 1, p. 44).Working as an abortionist. As recounted above, while in medical school, Armand performed at least one solo abortion, and so may have been supplementing his income by performing abortions regularly.Having dad sent to Sing Sing. When Marie Oganesoff bled to death, Armand would have been distracted from his studies by the police investigation, by his father (to whom he was close) standing trial in his stead, and being convicted, and being sent off to Sing Sing.Picking up the Bolshevik torch. Where Armand should have been studying for his finals, he was instead implementing plans urged upon him by his father from prison to pick up the torch of the Bolshevik overthrow of the United States — these United States that were proving so inhospitable to the Hammer clan, and that would be so delicious to plunder if the seizure of power that had recently succeeded in the Slavic lands could be duplicated in the New World as well. The immediate step that would assist that plan, according to the incarcerated Dr Julius Hammer, was to send Armand to Moscow where Armand would place not only himself, but the whole Hammer family, at the service of Lenin. As Armand applied for his passport to travel to Russia on 16-Apr-1921, we see that preparations for this new venture were being implemented in the spring of the very year in which he was supposed to be completing his medical studies.Government surveillance. And capping it all off would have been the distraction of Armand's awareness that his family was under the surveillance of the New York City Police Department "Red Squad," by the FBI, by the US Army, and by other American and British agencies.The presence of any one of the above distractions would be enough to make many medical students either drop out or fail. The simultaneous presence of half a dozen such distractions absolutely guarantees that a medical student will drop out or fail. Thus, the first part of the closing sentence below — that Armand was not attending classes — is compatible with all of the above, and so is believable; the second part — that he somehow did well on his examinations anyway — is incompatible with any of the above, and so must be understood as Armand-Hammer-generated disinformation, with which the world has been saturated:Dr. Hammer was the son of Russian émigrés. He made his first million in the pharmaceuticals business while still a student at Columbia University. Business kept him away from so many classes than some fellow students assumed he had dropped out of school, yet he graduated in the top 10 of his class. FOIA, Part 6, p. 19. "Than" instead of "that" is in the original.

Logged

All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately

One final consideration that undermines Armand's claim to a medical degree is his lack of grounding in reality when he addresses the subject of medical qualifications. For example:For all his business feats, though, Hammer still speculates whether he should have pursued medicine instead of management. "I think I would have made a pretty good doctor," he says with an easy grin. "I have always renewed my license to practice every year. If anything happens, I'll have something to fall back on." Newsweek, 12-Oct-1964, p. 91, in FOIA.FBI, Part 5, p. 89.

If Armand Hammer were not living in a fantasy world, he might have recollected that (assuming for the moment he did get a medical degree in 1921) he nevertheless skipped his internship, and so of course never practiced medicine, and that at the time of his Newsweek interview, he was ignorant of the previous 43 years of progress in medical science (between 1921 and 1964) — and yet he imagined that he could just start practicing medicine in 1964, or in fact at any later time, at the drop of a hat!

Of course Armand Hammer had no intention of ever practicing medicine — all he wanted was to be allowed to write a "Dr" in front of his name — and for permitting this harmless affectation, Columbia University would receive five million dollars toward its Health Sciences Center, and who knows how much else to how many Columbia University employees starting in 1921 and continuing on for at least the next sixty years. Granting honorary degrees is one way that universities indulge the vanity of generous benefactors, and for practical purposes, Hammer's MD was no better than an honorary degree — this is the sort of thinking that each bribed employee could have followed to ease his conscience.

Today, Columbia University finds itself in the awkward position of having the names "Julius and Armand Hammer" carved into the stone of its Health Sciences Center while the public becomes increasingly aware that Julius and Armand Hammer were Soviet agents, that Julius took the rap for Armand's botched abortion, and that their life's work consisted of stealing from Americans and undermining their democracy — so of course Columbia University today will want to avoid acknowledging that on top of all that, the Columbia MD that Armand had been allowed to claim for some 70 years was fraudulent.

What could be the FBI's motive for often repeating that Armand had an MD, and not once questioning it, is another matter. At best, it suggests a failure to probe beneath surface appearances; at worst, it hints at Armand's corruption spreading deeper into American institutions than we would like to imagine possible.

A thoroughly disreputable Armand Hammer

Biographer Epstein sums up Armand Hammer's moral and ethical orientation with the following condemnation:LAMB: How often when you researched this book did you go, "Wow"?

EPSTEIN: Not only when I researched the book, when I wrote the book and even after I wrote the book; when I got the tapes and began to listen to Hammer in his own voice discussing bribes and things like that, I went, "Wow," all the time. Because I didn't really realize — I had always had a picture of business like I read it in Forbes magazine or Business Week or how presumably it's taught in business school; something where you get up early in the morning, you work hard, you have imaginative ideas, you do things differently than other people and you make money. With Hammer, what he really brought back from Russia was his education. That's what made him a wealthy man. And what his education in Russia — it wasn't an education in literature or mathematics, it was an education in bribery, in compromise, in blackmail and basically how to approach a government figure and get him to give you a concession. And that proved, in the world of oil, in the world of Middle East, that Soviet education, he was truly Lenin's first capitalist. He learned how to basically apply the principles of conspiracy to Western capitalism very successfully. C-SPAN interview of Edward Jay Epstein by Brian Lamb regarding the Epstein biography Dossier: The Secret History of Armand Hammer, 05-Jan-1997.

But a Baking Soda King, nevertheless

Returning to the Arm and Hammer baking soda with which we started at the top of the present letter, we find that it is not wholly irrelevant to the trail that we are following, as it at first seemed:"They call me the baking soda king," he'd cackle when you asked him about Occidental's inexplicable acquisition of an interest in Arm & Hammer. James Cook, Forbes, www.freerepublic.com/forum/a391d17f80f34.htm

Whatever the truth of the matter, Hammer once painted an arm-and-hammer emblem on his yacht, giving rise to persistent speculation that he either was (a) the owner of Church & Dwight, makes of A&H baking soda, or (b) a Commie. Tired of explaining otherwise, Hammer tried to buy the company, but they didn't want to sell. So in 1986 he settled for the next best thing, a partnership with Church & Dwight that netted Oxy Pete a sizable chunk of C&D stock and Hammer a seat on C&D's board. For a time, then, Armand Hammer was a director and owner (if not THE owner) of Arm & Hammer. Occidental sold the stock shortly after Hammer's death in 1990, apparently figuring a pun was not the best basis for a lasting business relationship. The Straight Dope, www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_198.html

To sum up so far, the thread that started with "Al Arm-and-Hammer Gore" led to Arm & Hammer baking soda, and that led to the Arm and Hammer symbol of the Socialist Labor Party, and that led to Communism, and all these together led us to father-son Julius and Armand Hammer. Following the thread still further leads to your father and his son.

Al Arm-and-Hammer Gore

Of all the people in the world that a US Presidential candidate would want to avoid being associated with, Armand Hammer would surely be near the top of the list; and yet of all the people in the world that you have been associated with, Armand Hammer has been near the top of your list. Your relationship appears to have begun early:

Rumor has it that your middle name is Armand, suggesting that your father followed in Dr Julius Hammer's footsteps by inserting into his son's name a reference to the object of his veneration. That is, Dr Julius Hammer venerated the Arm and Hammer of Communism, and named his son with the camouflaged Armand Hammer; your father venerated Armand Hammer, and named you with the camouflaged Albert A. Gore.

If not, then why didn't you simply answer the fifth-grader's question below by saying that your middle name was Arnold, the same as your father's? Your not answering this fifth-grader leaves the impression that you sensed a trap, sensed that he had been coached by malevolent forces to put this question to you, and that your replying with the lie that your middle name was Arnold would be walking into that trap:February 14, 2000

What's in a Name? In Al Gore's Case,Middle Initial Is Just Another Letter

Mr. Gore didn't answer, turning the question around and asking young Christopher his middle name.

Reporters in attendance, intrigued by this, asked the vice president's staff. They were directed to publicly released copies of his tax returns and other documents, in which the name is listed as Albert Arnold Gore, the same as that of his father, the late Tennessee senator.

Over the years, Mr. Gore seems to have sometimes used, and sometimes dropped, the middle name of Arnold. He also alternated between using and not using the suffix "Jr." But a copy of his birth certificate, provided after repeated requests by Mr. Gore's office on Jan. 31, the day before the New Hampshire primary, reveals a curiosity: Legally, Mr. Gore's name is simply Albert A. Gore.

That's reminiscent of another famous Democrat, former President Harry S. Truman, who had no middle name. Mr. Truman said that in spite of the period, the S didn't stand for anything. It was a compromise between the names of his grandfathers, Anderson Shipp Truman and Solomon Young.

Meanwhile, Mr. Gore's spokesman, Chris Lehane, released a brief explanation: "Al Gore's parents gave him the option of which middle name to use. Since he was a teenager, he has chosen to use Albert Arnold Gore."

Born in Washington, D.C., on March 30, 1948, the future vice president's arrival was heralded on the front page of the Nashville Tennessean, because of his father's position. The senator had previously noted that the child of then-Rep. Estes Kefauver had gotten lesser treatment, and remarked: "If I have a boy baby, I don't want the news buried in the inside of the paper." So the day after his son was born, the Tennessean obliged by carrying the headline: "Well Mr. Gore, Here HE Is — On Page One."

The story didn't give a name for the boy, nor did a birth notice published in the Washington Post.

Moreover, on Mr. Gore's birth certificate, the space left for the "Child's Full Name" is blank, apparently reflecting some early indecision on the part of the Gores about what to call their son.

At the bottom of the page, however, is a handwritten notation in script added nine days after the birth. It appears exactly as follows: "name of child Albert A. Gore... .added from Supp. Report 4-10." FreeRepublic, Vetting the Nominee,www.freerepublic.com/forum/a39952da15691.htm.

You must admit that your parents acted most peculiarly. They didn't disclose your name in front-page newspaper coverage of your birth. They didn't supply a name for your birth announcement in the Washington Post. They left blank "Child's Full Name" on your birth certificate, and supplied (using some alternative route) that your name was the cryptic "Albert A. Gore." What was going on here?

Perhaps the answer is provided in the statement below which appeared under the heading Gore won’t bare his scarlet letter, the explanation being that your parents wanted to flatter Armand Hammer by giving you the middle name Armand, but knowing also that Armand was the devil, they tried to cover up from the eyes of the world the homage they were paying him:One source who has followed Gore closely for years says his parents gave him an initial as a middle name because they wanted their friend and benefactor, the controversial late industrialist Armand Hammer, to believe that their child was named for him. The Montgomery County Observer,www.montco-pa.com/docs/news/observer/archive/Obs022300/html/national_pg.4.html

Distinguished Senator from Occidental

But this naming of firstborn sons in order to pay tribute is only an indicator of some underlying relationship, and it is the nature of that relationship that is of primary interest. The nature of that underlying relationship appears to be captured by the following oft-repeated anecdote:Hammer owned Al Gore Snr. Hammer kept Gore, as he liked to say, "in my back-pocket". When he said this, Hammer would touch his wallet and chuckle. Neil Lyndon, www.freerepublic.com/forum/a38c4a8fd6308.htm

More specifically, in the early days, that underlying relationship appears to have been that Armand Hammer set up the front of Black Angus breeding as a way of channeling funds to your father:He had extended his largesse to both Republicans and Democrats. His principal contact among the Democrats in the House was Albert Gore of Tennessee. In 1950, Hammer had made Congressman Gore a partner in a cattle-breeding business, and Gore made a substantial profit. Edward Jay Epstein, Dossier: The secret history of Armand Hammer, Random House, New York, 1996, pp. 165-166.

The way that this front operated was as follows, along with information on other methods of laundering money from Armand Hammer to the Gore family:Hammer Ties "Extremely Sensitive"

Roy Neel, a former top Gore aide, told Zelnick that Gore was "extremely sensitive" about his father's connection with the late Armand Hammer, the head of Occidental Petroleum, who was notorious for his close ties to the Soviet Union.

When Gore Sr. was first elected to Congress in 1938, he was a poor schoolteacher. But by the time he was elected to the Senate in 1952, he had become rich enough to live in a plush hotel on Washington's embassy row and send Al Jr. to the expensive St. Albans School in Washington.

Armand Hammer had helped make Al Gore Sr. a wealthy man. Zelnick's book and a new book just released in January, "The Buying of the President 2000" by Charles Lewis [...] tell how Armand Hammer bought the services of Al Gore, Sr. and helped Al Jr. launch his political career. [...]

Hammer helped Gore Sr. get started raising Black Angus cattle, giving him sperm from his own private stock.

Zelnick says residents in the area where the Gore farm was located claim that Gore was able to sell his cattle at much higher prices than anyone else in the area.

They say that "lobbyists and others with an interest in Gore's work" would come to Carthage and "bid outrageously high prices for Gore's stock." One of them was Joe DeMaggio, who in 1958 bought ten calves from Gore "on behalf of clients whose identities he refused to disclose."

Zelnick says the prices paid cannot be documented, but newspaper records show that "many distinguished folks" came to buy the Gores' cattle. He quotes former Governor Ned McWherter, a staunch ally of Al Gore Jr., as saying, "I've sold some Angus in my time too, but I never got the kind of prices for my cattle that the Gores got for theirs."

Zelnick also claims that in 1969, when Hammer bought the Hooker Chemical Co. (of Love Canal fame), he sold Gore Sr. 1,000 shares of Hooker stock for $150 a share, far less than the stock was worth. House majority leader Hale Boggs accused Hammer of having violated insider trading rules in buying Hooker, but "a Securities Exchange Commission investigation proved inconclusive."

When Gore Sr. was defeated for reelection in 1970, Hammer made him president of Occidental's coal division, paying him $500,000 a year, which was extremely generous compensation at that time. Al Gore's Skeletons: The Hammer Connection,pub5.ezboard.com/fyourdonpolitics.showMessage?topicID=146.topic

Eventually, you too were put on Armand Hammer's payroll

One device which channelled some of Armand Hammer's money to you was that of mineral rights:VETTING THE NOMINEE

Al Gore, Environmentalist and Zinc MinerOriginally published in The Wall Street Journal, June 29, 2000.

BY MICAH MORRISONSaturday, August 12, 2000 12:01 a.m. EDT

[...]

CARTHAGE, Tenn. — On his most recent tax return, as he has the past 25 years, Vice President Al Gore lists a $20,000 mining royalty for the extraction of zinc from beneath his farm here in the bucolic hills of the Cumberland River Valley. In total, Mr. Gore has earned $500,000 from zinc royalties. His late father, the senator, introduced him not only to the double-bladed ax but also to Armand Hammer, chairman of Occidental Petroleum Corp., which sold the zinc-rich land to the Gore family in 1973. [...]

Mr. Hammer cultivated close relationships with many politicians, but he was closest to Mr. Gore's father, a U.S. senator from 1953 until 1971. Mr. Hammer's Occidental Minerals snapped up the zinc-bearing property in 1972. The senior Mr. Gore's farm is on the opposite bank of the Caney Fork. Mr. Hammer paid $160,000, double the only other offer, according to the Washington Post, which first disclosed details of the arrangement during the 1992 presidential campaign.

According to deed documents in Carthage, a year later Mr. Hammer sold the land to the senior Mr. Gore for $160,000, adding the extremely generous $20,000 per year mineral royalty. Ten minutes after that sale, the former senator executed a deed selling the property, including the mineral rights, to his son, the future vice president, for $140,000. Albert Gore Sr. told the Post he kept the first $20,000 royalty for himself, evening up the father-son transaction.

The purpose of the sale appears to have been transferring the annual $20,000 payment from Mr. Hammer to the young Mr. Gore. OpinionJournal from the Wall Street Journal Editorial Page,www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=65000067

And eventually, you too were put under Armand Hammer's thumb

The degree to which Armand Hammer oversaw and managed your career is not widely known. An example of Armand Hammer's hands-on approach to supporting budding politicians:In 1988, during his abortive run for the presidency, the 39-year-old Gore again relied on the largesse of Armand Hammer. According to Zelnick, Gore became involved in the Illinois primary against Paul Simon, Jesse Jackson and Michael Dukakis and needed money that the banks wouldn't lend him. Hammer came through with the funds and personally called Simon, a popular native son, asking him to withdraw and endorse Gore in return for a cabinet level appointment if Gore were elected.

Stunned, Simon angrily rejected the offer and won the election. Gore received only a tiny fraction of the vote.

The year before this occurred, Gore flew with Hammer to Moscow to meet with Mikhail Gorbachev. Hammer received a humanitarian award from the International Physicians Against Nuclear War. Gore spoke to the same group, advocating a cut in nuclear weapons. Once Gore and Hammer returned to the U.S., the newly-minted senator continued to laud his benefactor for his patriotism. www.sightings.com/general4/doss.htm

You became a member of an Armand Hammer retinue

When we sometimes read of your parents' closest friends, it is distressing to learn that they too were on the Armand Hammer payroll, giving the appearance of a group whose cohesion depended upon their belonging to an Armand Hammer retinue. For example, in connection with your decision to run for Congress:What would Al's parents think? They were not in Tennessee that weekend, but out in California with their friends and frequent traveling companions, Bill and Dorothy McSweeney. In the years since his forced retirement from politics, Gore Senior had been working in the oil and energy empire of Armand Hammer, his old Angus cattle partner, as executive vice president of Hammer's newly acquired Island Creek Coal Co. and as a board member of Occidental Petroleum Corp., sinecures that had brought him some measure of wealth for the first time in his life. ("When the voters put me out to pasture," he explained unapologetically, "I went looking for the tallest grass I could find.")

McSweeney, a former Hearst newspapers journalist and White House aide to LBJ, was president of another Hammer subsidiary, Occidental International Corp., and often invited Albert and Pauline Gore to accompany him on trips overseas. During stops in Los Angeles near Occidental headquarters, the two couples stayed in their favorite suite at the Beverly Wilshire. David Maraniss and Ellen Nakashima, Washington Post,washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A40603-2000Aug5.html

The Armand Hammer retinue deemed that your relationship with Armand Hammer was OK

In connection with vetting you as Bill Clinton's running mate in 1992, we come across the following statement, which backfires in its intended effect of clearing you of wrongdoing — on the question of the innocence of your relationship with Armand Hammer, its offering a joke is unconvincing, while at the same time what it does offer that is convincing is how long and close that relationship had been, and how it was understood by all that Armand Hammer could be counted upon to seize every opportunity to corrupt those around him, and so the public appearance had to be projected that he had been kept at a distance:Harry McPherson got the word to place another round of calls to ensure that there were no last-minute surprises. He reached Bill McSweeney, Gore Senior's friend and associate from Occidental Petroleum Corp., and asked him whether there was anything in the relationship between the Gores and Armand Hammer that might prove embarrassing.

"Harry," McSweeney said to his fellow LBJ White House alumnus, "let me put it to you this way: Pauline Gore and I spent 20 years making sure that Armand Hammer was never alone in the same room with Al Gore so I could answer this phone call." David Maraniss and Ellen Nakashima, Washington Post,washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7185-2000Aug10.html

Of course McSweeney was not the person best able to give an honest answer to the question of whether Armand Hammer had corrupted you, as McSweeney himself was on the Armand Hammer payroll, as we have just seen above.

But you were in it up to your neck

There is no lack of evidence that your relationship with Armand Hammer was intimate and prolonged. You invited him to your wedding reception in 1970. You hosted him at the inauguration of Ronald Reagan in 1981:Hammer, who had attended every president's inauguration since FDR's in 1933, watched the performance with great interest a few feet away from the principals. He was the guest of Albert Gore, Jr., the freshman senator from Tennessee (and future vice president). At five previous inaugurations, he had been the guest of Gore's father, Albert Gore, Sr., who now headed Occidental's coal division and earned more than $500,000 a year. Hammer, despite his advancing age, still moved about with great energy, flailing his hand to greet other VIPs. His positioning was excellent. He was seated in the section of the stands reserved for the one hundred senators of the United States. Edward Jay Epstein, Dossier: The secret history of Armand Hammer, Random House, New York, 1996, p. 303.

Eyewitness Neil Lyndon gives us a particularly detailed account of your hosting of Armand Hammer at the 1989 inauguration of George Bush Senior:After he had entered the Senate in the early 1980s, Al Gore Jnr would always swing his influence to provide Hammer with a conspicuous place at presidential inaugurations. He helped to ensure that Hammer was invited, almost alone among private citizens, into the inner circle of the Capitol when Ronald Reagan was inaugurated for the second time. For the Bush inauguration in 1989, however, Al Gore exceeded himself.

On the morning of the ceremony, Hammer and his entourage, including me, were among the few guests at the Gores' Washington apartment, where Al and Tipper personally served coffee and cookies. Tipper was effervescent and garrulous, while her husband was tense and guarded, his almond-shaped eyes darting sidelong glances. It looked as if he were in the grip of an unwanted compulsion, as if he didn't much care for us being there but had no choice.

After the party, Gore accompanied Hammer to his seat on the podium. Given Hammer's insatiable hunger for self-promotion, for showing himself off in the cockpits of world power, the place that Gore had reserved for his political godfather was a perfect gift of fealty.

"I had the best seat in the house," Hammer chortled afterwards. He was placed at the top of the platform, beside the steps and the double doors that led into the Capitol. When the ceremony was finished and the platform party mounted the steps, they formed a file to shake the hand of the little, ancient, myopic man who had risen with a grin to usher them in. The new President Bush shook Hammer's hand. The retiring President Reagan also shook his hand, followed by the new First Lady, the old First Lady, the new Vice President Quayle and his lady and the Chief Justice.

All the television networks carried the picture. CNN played the sequence every half-hour throughout the evening of election day. Millions of Americans and lonely travellers in hotel rooms around the world saw images that made it look as if Hammer had personally paid for the inauguration ceremony and everybody leaving the platform was thanking their host for the party. He was in raptures. All thanks to Al Jr.

WHY did Gore Jnr allow himself to be so closely embroiled in a compromising connection with such an unalloyed crook? He had little choice. He inherited from his father the mantle of being Hammer's principal boy in Washington. Gore's father effectively delivered his son into Armand Hammer's back-pocket. Neil Lyndon, How Mr Clean got his hands dirty, Sunday Telegraph (London), 01-Nov-1998,www.freerepublic.com/forum/a38c4a8fd6308.htm

And what did the Gores give Armand Hammer in return?

(1) The Gores gave Armand Hammer protection

Al Gore Senior support won Armand Hammer protection from investigation and prosecution, which renders more credible some of the speculations higher above that FBI investigation of Armand Hammer was reluctant, and that the FBI finding of insufficient evidence to continue an investigation was frequent:In 1961, memos between Hoover and William Sullivan, head of domestic counter-intelligence at the FBI, said that Hammer could not be pursued because he was "protected" by Senator Albert Gore Sr. Russian Culture: Armand Hammer and Sickle?russianculture.about.com/culture/russianculture/library/weekly/aa100900a.htm

Hammer had demonstrated, as Hoover had handwritten in his file, that he had "political support." At least two influential senators — Styles Bridges of New Hampshire and Own Brewster of Maine — and two important congressmen — Albert Gore of Tennessee and Emanuel Cellar of New York — were among his supporters. Hoover, who had survived in Washington for three decades because he understood the reality of power, had no interest in challenging this congressional phalanx. He decided to take no action. Hammer had effectively stalemated him. Edward Jay Epstein, Dossier: The secret history of Armand Hammer, Random House, New York, 1996, pp. 173.

However, Hammer never gave anybody a bean without demanding a payback. In return for his cattle money, he required Gore to represent his interests in the political world. Gore obediently did his master's bidding. In the 1950s, Gore used his influence with J. Edgar Hoover to quash an FBI investigation and a hearing of the House UnAmerican Affairs' Committee into Hammer's dealings with the Soviet Union. Later, Gore defended Hammer on the floor of the Senate against allegations of bribery in obtaining Government contracts (allegations that later proved to be true). Neil Lyndon, Sunday Telegraph (London),www.freerepublic.com/forum/a38c4a8fd6308.htm

Such assertions as the above encourage also the view that if Armand Hammer had corrupted the FBI and other government agencies into granting him a measure of immunity from investigation and prosecution, then how much easier it would have been for him to corrupt one or two individuals into revising his academic record at Columbia University so as to show that he had earned a Medical Doctor degree when he had not.

(2) The Gores gave Armand Hammer access

In addition to Armand Hammer using your father to provide protection, he used it to attempt to gain access to higher authorities, not always successfully, as for example as the guest of Al Gore Senior at the inauguration of John Fitzgerald Kennedy in 1961:That evening, Hammer was Senator Albert Gore's guest at one of the five black-tie inaugural balls. He could count on Gore for such invitations. He had made him his partner in the cattle-breeding business — a partnership that had proved profitable — and he had given him each Christmas over the past five years a gift of antique silver. Since Gore had been a close colleague of Kennedy's in the Senate, there seemed to be a good possibility that Kennedy might stop by his table, and Hammer sat patiently next to Pauline Gore, waiting for such a moment. Edward Jay Epstein, Dossier: The secret history of Armand Hammer, Random House, New York, 1996, pp. 199.

Countless instances of Armand essaying to reach the top through your father can be found, as for example the following:Ever since he had returned from Russia in 1961, he had pushed, without success, to associate himself publicly with President Kennedy. He even had Senator Gore propose that he act as the president's intermediary to Berlin when another crisis occurred there. The White House did not respond to that offer [...]. Edward Jay Epstein, Dossier: The secret history of Armand Hammer, Random House, New York, 1996, pp. 208.

And when the President could not be reached, then Armand Hammer settled for a Senator:Since Hammer would not be going to Moscow under the aegis of President Kennedy, he needed another sponsor, and Senator Gore helped provide one. Edward Jay Epstein, Dossier: The secret history of Armand Hammer, Random House, New York, 1996, pp. 202.

Below is an example of how reflexively Hammer would turn to Al Gore Senior, and of the sort of service that Armand Hammer might require of him. It seems in this case that Armand was distressed by the circulation of a printed flier beginning "Let it be known throughout our beloved land" and captioned "Communists — the Hammer Brothers," and that he supplied a copy of this flier to the FBI Laboratory for examination, hoping possibly that the FBI would be able to discover the authors for him.On 11/16/66, Assistant Director MALONE had occasion to converse with ARMAND HAMMER (Bufile 61-280), who indicated that he was greatly distressed over this present character assassination and intended to see Senatore GORE of Tennessee regarding the matter. He indicated that he would have Senator GORE see if the Director of the FBI, JOHN EDGAR HOOVER, could not do something about the matter. Mr. ARMAND HAMMER indicated to Mr. MALONE that some 15 years ago he had Senator STYLES BRIDGES have the Director conduct an investigation regarding his background to prove such allegations were false. FOIA.FBI, Part 5, p. 85. Misspelling "Senatore" was in the original.

(3) The Gores gave Armand Hammer wealth

And it is not only protection and access that the Gores returned for Armand Hammer's generosity — sometimes they facilitated deals that netted Armand Hammer vast fortunes. One of these was your father removing obstacles to Armand Hammer obtaining concessions to Libyan oil:As head of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Gore used his influence on the US Ambassador in Libya to arrange a meeting between Hammer and King Idris. That meeting transformed the position of Occidental Petroleum, making it one of the biggest oil companies in the world and Hammer one of the world's most prominent entrepreneurs.

At a cost of at least $5 million, Hammer bribed the old King and some of his ministers to give him a concession on a vast Libyan oil field that would ultimately produce 800,000 barrels of crude a day (worth roughly $20 million a day or almost $7.5 billion a year). Al Gore Snr was at Hammer's side on the day he paraded King Idris up a red carpet laid on the desert to open the new field. Neil Lyndon, How Mr Clean got his hands dirty, Sunday Telegraph (London), 01-Nov-1998,www.freerepublic.com/forum/a38c4a8fd6308.htm

And another of the very large deals that netted Armand Hammer a fortune was made possible by your urging the Clinton administration to sell the 47,000-acre Elk Hills naval petroleum reserve in Bakersfield California, a sale that was eventually made to Occidental Petroleum. It was the largest privatization of federal property in U.S. history, one that tripled Occidental's U.S. oil reserves overnight.

Anything wrong with that? Certainly the requisite environmental review was improper — it was conducted by ICF Kaiser International, on whose board of directors sat Tony Coelho, general chairman of your presidential campaign. More importantly, you appear to have provided the impetus for this sale, and the sale was made to Occidental Petroleum with which you had such intimate ties. On top of that, Occidental Petroleum was making large contributions to the Democratic Party, and some even directly to yourself:Occidental had contributed more than $470,000 to the Democratic Party. This included a check for $100,000 written two days after Occidental chairman, Ray Irani, was a guest in the Lincoln Bedroom. Gore received $35,550 directly. Chuck Morse, Al Gore and Teapot Dome,www.chuckmorse.com/gore_tea_pot_dome.html

The defense that the sale of Elk Hills to Occidental Petroleum resulted from a public auction is not completely satisfactory, as it is possible to discourage the bidding of others by feeding them disinformation. As an example of a place where an investigation of this possibility could begin, one could start by asking why it had been initially projected that the cost of extraction at Elk Hills would be $4.50 per barrel, when it turned out to be only $1.50 per barrel, and whether Occidental Petroleum was aware that the $4.50 per barrel estimate was inflated, and whether other oil companies would have taken a stronger interest in acquiring Elk Hills if they had been informed that $1.50 was closer to the truth (see www.sightings.com/general4/doss.htm ).

The summing up

Eyewitness Neil Lyndon pens a devastating overview of your relationship to Armand Hammer:Throughout the whole of his life, Al Gore Snr and his family depended on pay-outs, kickbacks and subventions from Hammer. Like his father's before him, Al Gore Jnr's political career was lavishly sponsored by Hammer from the moment it began until Hammer died, only two years before Gore joined Clinton in the 1992 race for the White House.

Federal Election Commission records show that Hammer, his wife, his corporations and junior members of his family all made contributions to Gore's campaigns up to the maximum amounts allowable by law. Some of these contributions came from Hammer's grandson Michael and his wife, Dru. [...]

The profound and prolonged involvement between Hammer and Gore has never been revealed nor investigated. Only trifling snippets about Gore and Hammer have ever appeared, and those in minor American publications. The few people in the world who know about their close involvement have always been dryly amused by Gore's Mr Clean reputation, a reputation only recently called into question over allegations of Gore's illicit fund-raising activities in the Presidential election of 1996. Gore's intimacy with Hammer was frequently visible to me throughout the Eighties when I worked on Hammer's personal staff and travelled constantly with him.

Hammer regularly met Al Gore Jnr for lunch or dinner on his visits to Washington. They would often eat together in the company of Occidental's Washington lobbyists and fixers who, on Hammer's behest, hosed tens of millions of dollars in bribes and favours into the political world. Al Gore and his wife, Tipper, attended Hammer's lavish parties and receptions in Washington: Hammer's 90th birthday party at the Watergate Hotel cost more than $10 million, including a promised fee — on which he welched — of $250,000 to the National Symphony Orchestra for their rendition of Happy Birthday to You.

Separately and together, the Gores sometimes used Hammer's luxurious private Boeing 727 for their own journeys and jaunts. Tipper once hitched a ride with us when Hammer was flying back to America from Europe. During the flight, Tipper Gore and I, seated on the sofas in the forward saloon, had a long conversation about the effect of media intrusion into the affairs of American politicians. Neil Lyndon, How Mr Clean got his hands dirty, Sunday Telegraph (London), 01-Nov-1998,www.freerepublic.com/forum/a38c4a8fd6308.htm

Two conclusions

Good thing you weren't elected President

It would appear that the Gore family fortune was made by the Communist agent Armand Hammer, and that without Armand Hammer's support, your career might have proved less illustrious, and your personal fortune smaller.

For these reasons, your becoming President of the United States would have been disastrous both for you and for the Democratic Party and for the country, as much of the above information had begun to be placed before the public eye well before the campaign, and would have become widely known had you been elected President, and would have undermined your legitimacy and besmirched your administration.

Americans would not have been naive enough to imagine that the information which they had been allowed to glimpse captured the sum total of your relationship with Armand Hammer; rather, they would have been forced to assume that they had glimpsed just the tip of an iceberg, and that your compromise ran much deeper. Americans would have been saying that if you represented American Aristocracy, then they preferred to be Commoners. Americans would have been wondering how a man had won the Presidency not only when he came lacking the qualifications for that office, but when he came flaunting overwhelming disqualifications.

Armand Hammer was one cog in the great Demjanjuk-persecution machine

Armand Hammer is of interest to anyone who has been following the persecution of John Demjanjuk, both by the American and the Israeli governments, because it was Armand Hammer who brought the Trawniki ID card from Moscow to Jerusalem. Armand Hammer served as a courier because he could be represented to the world not as a Soviet official or agent, but simply as an American businessman playing the role of impartial mediator. In this way, Moscow could contribute to the effort to discredit Ukrainians, while minimizing its exposure to blame for the perverse use that Israel was making of that ID card.

The perverse use that I am referring to is that the Trawniki ID card, if accepted as genuine, would place John Demjanjuk at Sobibor, and would prohibit him from being at Treblinka upon pain of immediate arrest, whereas the Israeli prosecution was using that same card to bolster its accusation that John Demjanjuk had been Ivan the Terrible of Treblinka. That — along with the card's shaky authenticity — is why the Kremlin did not itself deliver the card, did not provide any chain of custody, and did not offer any word supporting its authenticity. While Armand Hammer was playing the role of a go-between, he was more importantly playing the role of a firewall.

When the Demjanjuk defense attempted in Jerusalem to demonstrate Armand Hammer's lack of trustworthiness, the Israeli judges prohibited the presentation of evidence with the flippant comment that Armand Hammer was not the accused in this trial.

What taking a look into the life of Armand Hammer does for those following the Demjanjuk persecution, then, is that it provides further reason for believing that all the people involved in that persecution, from those playing the leading roles at the top all the way down to the minor participants like Armand Hammer at the bottom, were individuals of low integrity, duplicitous, mendacious, ruthless, and not only unsympathetic to Western traditions, but working to overthrow them.

Logged

All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately

Anyone who ever paid the old, steep ($9, if memory serves) admission to the Armand Hammer Museum of Art in Los Angeles knows what it was like to be cheated by the master himself. Despite dabbling in the art business for more than half a century, dipping into the deep pockets of his company, Occidental Petroleum, and hiring a former director of the National Gallery as a consultant, Hammer's effort to be immortalized as a latter-day de Medici fell flat: The museum's collection was weak and spotty. Even the highlights had a distasteful whiff to them: the DaVinci manuscript that the oil magnate renamed the "Codex Hammer" (current owner Bill Gates has restored its old name, the "Leicester Codex") was sliced up like a loaf of bread for display, and the treasure trove of Daumier lithographs had been practically stolen from the L.A. County Museum of Art, where Hammer had been a trustee before reneging on a promise to leave his collection to the institution.

But in a sense it was the perfect memorial for Hammer: a hugely expensive, forbidding marble edifice built with other people's money and serving little purpose but the glorification of an extraordinary ego. As Edward Jay Epstein makes clear in his fascinating book Dossier: The Secret History of Armand Hammer, the story behind the man is a study in almost breathtaking deceit, cruelty, and megalomania.

Epstein had the good fortune to draw on sources unavailable to previous Hammer biographers: Soviet archives, FBI and SEC records, and Hammer's own tapes of his misdeeds, which he sometimes recorded through microphones in his cuff links. The author paints a brisk, engrossing portrait of Hammer in barely 350 pages. And although the writing is almost journalistic (news is grim, messages terse) and the man himself never quite crackles to life, the story is so spectacular and the reporting so thorough that one can hardly quibble with the result.

Hammer reads like a character out of Balzac. He dumped one wife and married a rich widow, while simultaneously shipping off a pregnant mistress to Mexico and forcing her into a sham marriage so that the child would not have the Hammer name (although he insisted on naming her after his grandmother). When his second wife became suspicious of his young art adviser, Hammer ordered the adviser/mistress to legally change her name and wear a disguise so that the two could continue seeing one another. He had a paternity test performed on his 59-year-old son Julian--who needed an appointment to talk to his father by phone--without telling him. He diverted millions of Oxy dollars into a private slush fund, using some of the money to build a college in hopes of getting nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. He created a movie unit at Oxy called Armand Hammer Productions (which was fitting since the studio existed to make films about him), and he bought the Arm and Hammer baking soda company because it sounded like his name. Next to Hammer, even Ross Perot looks self-effacing

The book also reminds us of the sordid role money often plays in American politics and how often influence mongering distorts the workings of the marketplace, making a success out of someone who came close to destroying every business he touched. Hammer's only real triumph, it seems, was the creation of his own myth during his lifetime.

The only person who ever appears to have intimidated Hammer was his father, Julius. A Russian emigrant, Hammer pere was a doctor, a businessman, and a devoted member of Daniel DeLeon's Socialist Labor Party, a forerunner of the American Communist Party. He named his first son, born in 1898, Armand, after the arm and hammer insignia of the party. The elder Hammer ran a chain of drug stores, but was a better revolutionary than businessman, for years funneling money to the party while cheating his creditors--a lesson his son would learn well.

Julius was too busy selling smuggled diamonds for the Soviet Union to bother much with his three sons, whom he bundled off to live with various socialist friends for several years. The only act of parental responsibility he appears to have taken was when he went to Sing Sing for a botched abortion that Armand performed while a med student. Armand paid his dad back by going to the Soviet Union as a courier in 1921.

The younger Hammer spent much of the next decade in Moscow, publicly a businessman trying to open the Soviet Union to capitalism, privately laundering money for the Soviets to finance espionage and revolution abroad. Although he ran the largest pencil-making concern in the U.S.S.R., most of Hammer's ventures were failures, and he was almost broke when he returned to the U.S. in 1931. That didn't stop him from publishing an autobiography, The Quest for the Romanoff Treasure, in which he claimed he'd gone to Russia as a doctor on a humanitarian mission and accidentally wound up a successful businessman, amassing millions of dollars and a great art collection. Soon Hammer was selling these "masterpieces"--the art mostly junk he was unloading for the Soviets. When he had trouble even keeping this bogus business afloat, Hammer acquired a government loan, allowing him to continue to defraud U.S. buyers and raise hard currency for the Soviets.

Besides collecting Russian art, Hammer also collected American politicians: among them Tennessee Sen. Al Gore Sr. and California Rep. James Roosevelt, FDR's ne'er-do-well son. And when Hammer discovered that J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI were blocking his doing business with the government because of his suspected dealings with the Soviet Union, he enlisted McCarthyite New Hampshire Sen. Styles Bridges to help him clear his name. Hammer blamed everything in his copious FBI record on his dead father. It worked.

Hammer had his first real business success toward the end of WWII with United Distillers, making cheap spirits. Soon the company payroll included Hammer's yacht captain, his airplane pilot, his chef, and even the farm hands on his estate breeding the prize bulls whose steroid-addled semen Hammer sold to unsuspecting ranchers. Hammer's smartest business move, however, was marrying Frances Barrett Tolman, a 53-year-old widow with lots of money. Despite his lavish lifestyle (paid for by the distillery), Hammer was earning less than $27,000 a year; his debts were piling up and his businesses sputtering With his new wife's bankroll he was able to become the head of Occidental Petroleum Corp., a small Los Angeles oil company on the verge of bankruptcy. Then, through sheer bluster, Hammer was able to inflate the company's stock price and bribe his way into a lucrative oil lease in Libya. Oxy went on to become the 14th largest industrial concern in the U.S.

While Hammer owned less than 1 percent of the company's stock, he ran Oxy as if it were a one-man business operating out of his garage: The company paid for his art collection, his philanthropy, his eponymous peace conference, and his extravagant birthday parties. "There are no committees, no auditors," Hammer once boasted. "You're looking at Oxy"

Eventually Hammer's luck waned. After giving a $54,000 illegal contribution to Richard Nixon's re-election campaign, then lying about it to the FBI and a Senate committee, Hammer faced felony charges of obstruction of justice. He initially agreed to plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge of making an illegal campaign contribution. But when Hammer blanched at actually admitting guilt in court, the government killed the plea bargain and started to move ahead with the case. At that point the robust 77-year-old was suddenly stricken ill and allowed to plead guilty to the misdemeanor charges. Hammer showed up in court in a wheelchair, trailing wires to a heart monitor, while aides held an oxygen tent at the ready. The next day a recovered Hammer was back in his office. "He was," one of Hammer's associates told Epstein, "the most devious man I ever met or could imagine"

Years later, Hammer tried to buy a pardon from Ronald Reagan by pledging $1 million to his presidential library. When Attorney General Edwin Meese found a problem with overruling the Justice Department on the issue, Hammer forgot his pledge, and later convinced President Bush to pardon him. The nonagenarian, who had denied his Jewishness for most of his life, then seduced Menachem Begin into nominating him for a Nobel Prize. But that quest was ended prematurely by cancer--a disease Hammer had expected to take credit for curing.

Hammer died in 1990 at the age of 92. His only son didn't attend the funeral. Within a year, more than 100 lawsuits were filed against his estate by charities, museums, and family members. Oxy had to write off$2.5 billion in losses from Hammer's wild global ventures and dismantle a corporate personality cult that would have done Kim Il Sung proud. And although Occidental couldn't completely rid itself of the $96 million Hammer Museum (it's adjacent to corporate headquarters) the company turned it over to UCLA, which cut the admission price and took down the huge portrait of its founder. The Hammer name, however, is still carved in three-foot-tall letters on the side of the building--a bit of Ozymandias on Wilshire Boulevard.

All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately

Welcome all the guests to this thread (there are like 50 all of a sudden)

I guess after two years of yelling about the war and tyranny was not that much interest to cointelpro.

BUT ONCE YOU UNRAVEL THE GLOBAL WARMING FRAUD....

BAM!

ROTHSCHILD, MAURICE STRONG, AND THE QUEEN BITCHES GET PISSED!

Wake up!

We Got Punked!

GLOBAL WARMING IS A SCAM BY ELITE PIGS TO ENACT A WORLDWIDE CARBON TAX!

Logged

All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately

Welcome all the guests to this thread (there are like 50 all of a sudden)

I guess after two years of yelling about the war and tyranny was not that much interest to cointelpro.

BUT ONCE YOU UNRAVEL THE GLOBAL WARMING FRAUD....

BAM!

ROTHSCHILD, MAURICE STRONG, AND THE QUEEN BITCHES GET PISSED!

Wake up!

We Got Punked!

GLOBAL WARMING IS A SCAM BY ELITE PIGS TO ENACT A WORLDWIDE CARBON TAX!

Yeah don't be afraid to post, people here are really cool, and the info is top notch. this is my homepage hehe.......

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"You gotta remember, establishment, it’s just a name for evil. The monster doesn’t care whether it kills all the students or whether there’s a revolution. It’s not thinking logically, it’s out of control."— John Lennon (1969)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEej1feA9N8

Live and learn. I didnt know about this but it all makes perfect sense.

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"Do not let your hatred of a people incite you to aggression." Qur'an 5:2At the heart of that Western freedom and democracy is the belief that the individual man, the child of God, is the touchstone of value..." -RFK

GLOBAL WARMING IS A SCAM BY ELITE PIGS TO ENACT A WORLDWIDE CARBON TAX! (quote from Sane)

Bob Chapman today said the average American will pay about 75% in taxes if the Cap and Slave Crap goes through. He said COPENHAGEN IS ALL ABOUT TAXATION.

hope thats not true! geesh thats like venus project type a shit

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"Do not let your hatred of a people incite you to aggression." Qur'an 5:2At the heart of that Western freedom and democracy is the belief that the individual man, the child of God, is the touchstone of value..." -RFK

Occidental Petroleum was founded in 1920 in California. Its early years as an oil-finding entity were largely undistinguished, with the company almost bankrupt by the mid-1950s. It was Occidental Petroleum's early difficulties, however, that laid the groundwork for its later success. In 1956 Occidental Petroleum came to the attention of Armand Hammer, a millionaire well-known for his savvy and success in business dealings with the Soviet Union in the 1920s. In 1921 Hammer had met Vladimir Lenin, the leader of the Russian Revolution, and had become the first U.S. businessman to establish ties with the Soviet Union. Among other enterprises, Hammer had operated an asbestos mine, imported grain, and manufactured pencils. While in Moscow, he had purchased Russian art treasures at bargain prices, later reselling many art objects in the United States at considerable profit. (Later it was revealed that many of Hammer's treasures were fakes, and he was well aware of it.)

In 1956 Hammer and his wife Frances each invested $50,000 in two oil wells that Occidental planned to drill in California. When both wells struck oil, Hammer, nearly 60, took an active interest in further Occidental oil exploration.

At Hammer's first association with Occidental, the company was run by Dave Harris, Roy Roberts, and John Sullivan. Hammer's increased involvement, his strong personality, and his ability to raise money for oil drilling propelled him more and more into the limelight. By July 1957 Hammer had become company president....

In 1966 Oxy's potential skyrocketed, with a billion-barrel oilfield find in Libya. The find was vintage Hammer, as he wined and dined important Libyan officials and then took a risk on land previously drilled by others. The Libyan oil finds established Oxy as one of the largest petroleum companies in the world. From early 1967 until November of that same year, Oxy's stock doubled in value to more than $100 a share....In the early 1970s, Hammer caused a sensation with a $20 billion long-term deal with the Soviets that featured a barter agreement by which Oxy would supply phosphate fertilizer to the U.S.S.R. in exchange for Soviet ammonia and urea....When Armand Hammer died at the age of 92 on December 10, 1990, the changeover in command at the top was expected: Ray Irani, president and chief executive officer under Hammer for six years, took over as chairman of the board. Irani worked quickly to get Oxy out from under Hammer's slew of pet projects, many of which had no place in an oil company's portfolio...In 1998, the US government sold the Elk Hills naval petroleum reserve to Occidental for $3.65 billion. According to the government, the reserve was no longer strategically necessary, and the reserve was sold to reduce the national debt and the size of the government. Critics cited the "no-bid" nature of the sale, together with Vice President Al Gore's involvement with the company as evidence of graft.[12]

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Behold, happy is the man whom God correcteth: therefore despise not thou the chastening of the Almighty: For he maketh sore, and bindeth up: he woundeth, and his hands make whole ; He shall deliver thee in six troubles: yea, in seven there shall no evil touch thee. - Job 5

1952 Sulzberger NY Times Publisher - became one of the founding members of Bilderberg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_DurantyWalter Duranty (1884–October 3, 1957) was a Liverpool-born British Jewish journalist who served as the New York Times Moscow bureau chief from 1922 through 1936. Duranty won a Pulitzer Prize in 1932 for a set of stories written in 1931 on the Soviet Union. Duranty's reporting has fallen into disrepute primarily because of his reports denying the famine in Ukraine. He has also been criticized for his favorable portrayals of Stalin and his uncritical coverage of Stalin's show trials.

THE QUEST OF THE ROMANOFF TREASURE. BY ARMAND HAMMER. FOREWORD BY WALTER DURANTY. New York: William Farquhar Payson, 1932. First Edition. Very Scarce.

Lenin signed photo for Armand Hammer

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Behold, happy is the man whom God correcteth: therefore despise not thou the chastening of the Almighty: For he maketh sore, and bindeth up: he woundeth, and his hands make whole ; He shall deliver thee in six troubles: yea, in seven there shall no evil touch thee. - Job 5

For thousands of years, the Kitanemuk Indians made their home in the Elk Hills of central California. Come February 2001, the last of the 100 burial grounds, holy places and other archaeological sites of the Kitanemuks will be obliterated by the oil drilling of Occidental Petroleum Company. Oxy's plans will "destroy forever the evidence that we once existed on this land," according to Dee Dominguez, a Kitanemuk whose great grandfather was a signatory to the 1851 treaty that surrendered the Elk Hills.

Occidental's planned drilling of the Elk Hills doesn't only threaten the memory of the Kitanemuk. Environmentalists say a rare species of fox, lizard and the kangaroo rat would also be threatened by Oxy's plans. A lawsuit has been filed under the Endangered Species Act. But none of that has given pause to Occidental or the politician who helped engineer the sale of the drilling rights to the federally-owned Elk Hills. That politician is Al Gore.

Gore recommended that the Elk Hills be sold as part of his 1995 "Reinventing Government" National Performance Review program. Gore-confidant (and former campaign manager) Tony Coelho served on the board of directors of the private company hired to assess the sale's environmental consequences. The sale was a windfall for Oxy. Within weeks of the announced purchase Occidental stock rose ten percent.

That was good news for Gore. Despite controversy over Dick Cheney's plans to keep stock options if elected, most Americans don't know that we already have a vice president with oil company stocks. Before the Elk Hills sale, Al Gore controlled between $250,000-$500,000 of Occidental stock (he is executor of a trust that he says goes only to his mother, but will revert to him upon her death). After the sale, Gore began disclosing between $500,000 and $1 million of his significantly more valuable stock.

Nowhere is Al Gore's environmental hypocrisy more glaring than when it comes to his relationship with Occidental. While on the one hand talking tough about his "big oil" opponents and waxing poetic about indigenous peoples in his 1992 book "Earth in the Balance," the Elk Hills sale and other deals show that money has always been more important to Al Gore than ideals.

From California to Colombia: Native Lands ThreatenedThe Kitanemuk are not the only indigenous group threatened by Occidental's oil operations. The 5000-member strong U'wa of northeastern Colombia, have threatened mass suicide if Oxy proceeds with plans to begin drilling oil on their ancestral homeland. The U'wa, who retain their language and traditions, understand the introduction of oil would devastate their culture. They also understand that oil facilities would put them in the midst of Colombia's fierce civil war.

"To the U'wa, oil equals violence," explains Danny Kennedy, director of the Berkeley, California-based Project Underground, which has helped wage an international campaign of support for the U'wa. Oil installations are a favorite target of leftist guerillas at war with the Colombian government. After guerillas bomb the installations, the army occupies the area. "Then comes the paramilitary, who are basically soldiers with hoods on at night. Then comes the terror campaign" says Kennedy. The U'wa, who have little contact with either the government or the guerillas, would end up becoming targets.

The U'wa have attracted international sympathy, but their efforts to enlist the support of Occidental's most famous shareholder -- Al Gore -- have come to naught. Gore publicly met the outcry over the U'wa with silence. The Vice President even refused a request by a Democratic member of Congress that he meet with an U'wa representative who had traveled to Washington to see him.

Meanwhile, Occidental pressed for the massive military aide package for Colombia the administration recently pushed through Congress. Occidental Vice President Lawrence Mirage testified before Congress in favor of the military aide package during the February deliberations, throwing in that those opposed to Occidental's drilling were a bunch of "extremists."

Two things set the U'wa struggle and the Elk Hills sale apart from the corporate welfare so typical of the New Democrats: Al Gore's direct financial interest and his close relationship with Occidental Petroleum that dates back to his father.

A Family AffairGore senior first met long-time Occidental CEO Armand Hammer at a cattle auction in the 1940s. When zinc ore was discovered on some of Gore's land, Hammer and Oxy bought it for twice the amount of the only other bid. Hammer then sold the land back to Gore while retaining the mineral rights. The elder Gore then sold the land to his son, Al Jr., who has received $20,000 yearly in mineral royalties from Occidental ever since. Two years after Gore Sr. was defeated in a bid for re-election to the Senate, he joined Occidental as a member of its board of directors and was rewarded with a $500,000 a year job working for an Oxy subsidiary.

Throughout his political life, Al Gore Jr. has received the favor the patronage of Occidental and Hammer's successor, CEO Ray Irani. And for every campaign finance violation Gore has committed, Irani seems to be lurking in the background. He was one of the contributors who slept in the Lincoln bedroom (a couple days later Irani wrote a $100,000 check to the DNC). When Al Gore made illegal fundraising calls from the White House, Irani was one of the recipients (he ponied up $50,000, according to a Harold Ickes memo unearthed during the investigation). In the Elk Hills sell-off , Irani and Oxy finally got the payoff worthy of their long patronage. It is a payoff crooked businessmen have dreamed of ever since the land was stripped from the Kitanemuks during the Gold Rush. Indeed, the history of Elk Hills and corruption is an old one. And it is a story most Americans have heard.

Gore's Teapot Dome Scandal?In 1922, executives of the Pan-American Petroleum and Transport Company (now known as ARCO) bribed Albert Fall, President Warren Harding's interior secretary, to give them leases to two oil fields reserved for a military emergency. One was on field in Wyoming called the "Teapot Dome," the name by which we would forever remember the biggest bribery scandal in modern American history.

The other field in the scandal was the navy's 47,000-acre reserve in the Elk Hills, near Bakersfield in Central California. These were traditional lands of the Kitanemuk people, better known by the name the Spanish gave them, the Tejon. They were forced off the Elk Hills by treaties signed with the federal government in 1851 during the midst of the gold rush and have since lived on the nearby Fort Tejon reservation, now called "Tejon Ranch."

While the scandal scuttled ARCO's plans, Occidental succeeded in acquiring Elk Hills seventy five years later. In 1997, after Gore's recommendation the land be sold, Oxy bought the region from the federal government for $3.7 billion. The sale represented a tripling of the company's U.S. oil reserves. Mired for years by declining reserves, Occidental's revenues for the first quarter of this year showed a dramatic 87 percent increase from the same period in 1999, before it began operations in the Elk Hills.

To complete the environmental assessment, the Energy Department hired a private company to complete the environmental impact statement necessary for the sale. The company was ICF Kaiser International, and on its board of directors sat none-other than Democratic super-fundraiser Tony Coelho. Coelho would later become Gore's campaign manager before being dumped after the Democrat's early stumbles. He is currently the subject of investigations by former employers in the State Department and by the Census Monitoring Board, seeking to determine if he misused his positions (both were administration appointments) for personal gain. The Securities and Exchange Commission, meanwhile, is investigating Coelho's myriad financial empire.

The Elk Hills sale, not surprisingly, was quickly approved. "I can't say that I've ever seen an environmental assessment prepared so quickly," says Peter Eisner, director of the Washington-D.C. public advocacy group Center for Public Integrity.

Meanwhile, as it became clear that Oxy was looking to undertake massive drilling operations in the Elk Hills, the 500 remaining Kitanemuk sought assurances from Oxy that their native sites and burial grounds would not be destroyed. Company officials said they would protect their heritage. But it soon it became apparent that the last of the 100 archaeological sites identified by the tribe would be destroyed by February 2001. Occidental agreed to first allow the State Native American Heritage Commission to retrieve what it feels is most valuable for a future display at a Museum at the California State University in Bakersfield.

"They are going to take the last memories of our people, the last evidence that we once inhabited this land and put it in a box and ship it off to a museum," laments tribal member Dee Dominguez. "All the material culture of the Kitanemuk would be destroyed forever. (But) the oil they are extracting will be completely drained in twenty years."

Dominguez calls Occidental executives "cold" and "insensitive," unwilling even to consider slant drilling that would save pieces of the tribe's history for future generations. "We've never denied them taking oil," she says. "We are not asking for land. We are not asking for royalties. We are just asking them to leave something to show that we were here."

As for Al Gore's role in the whole affair, Dominguez says she has thought about writing him. But she doesn't think it will help. "[Clinton and Gore] sold us down the river," she says. "It turns my stomach every time I hear them talk about family."

Bill Mesler is a Washington-based reporter. His work has appeared in the Nation, Mother Jones and the Progressive, among other publications.

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Behold, happy is the man whom God correcteth: therefore despise not thou the chastening of the Almighty: For he maketh sore, and bindeth up: he woundeth, and his hands make whole ; He shall deliver thee in six troubles: yea, in seven there shall no evil touch thee. - Job 5

"The lakes and rivers sustain us; they flow through the veins of the earth and into our own. But we must take care to let them flow back out as pure as they came, not poison and waste them without thought for the future." --Al Gore, "Earth in the Balance"

"He taught me how to plow a steep hillside with a team of mules. He taught me how to clear three acres of heavily-wooded forest with a double-bladed axe. . . . He taught me how to stop gullies before they got started. He taught me how to drive, how to shoot a rifle, how to fish, how to swim. We loved to swim together in the Caney Fork River off a big flat rock on the back side of his farm." --Al Gore on his father, Sen. Albert Gore Sr., from algore2000.com

CARTHAGE, Tenn.--On his most recent tax return, as he has the past 25 years, Vice President Al Gore lists a $20,000 mining royalty for the extraction of zinc from beneath his farm here in the bucolic hills of the Cumberland River Valley. In total, Mr. Gore has earned $500,000 from zinc royalties. His late father, the senator, introduced him not only to the double-bladed ax but also to Armand Hammer, chairman of Occidental Petroleum Corp., which sold the zinc-rich land to the Gore family in 1973.

It also seems that zinc from Mr. Gore's property ends up in the cool waters of the Caney Fork River, an oft-celebrated site in Gore lore. A major shaft and tailings pond of the Pasminco Zinc Mine sit practically in the backyard of the vice president's Tennessee homestead. Zinc and other metals from the Gore land move from underground tunnels through elaborate extraction processes. Waste material ends up in the tailings pond, from which water flows into adjacent Caney Fork, languidly rolling on to the great Cumberland.

Mining is intrinsically a messy business, and Pasminco Zinc generally has a good environmental record. But not one that would pass muster with "Earth in the Balance," Mr. Gore's best-selling environmental book. As recently as May 16, the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation issued a "Notice of Violation." It informed Pasminco that it had infringed the Tennessee Water Quality Control act due to high levels of zinc in the river.

Those zinc levels exceeded standards established by the state and the federal Environmental Protection Agency. A "sample analysis found that total zinc was 1.480 mg/L [milligrams per liter], which is greater than the monthly average of .65 mg/L and the daily maximum of 1.30 mg/L." Pasminco "may be subject to enforcement action pursuant to The Tennessee Water Quality Control Act of 1977 for the aforementioned violation," the notice stated.

This was not the first time Mr. Gore's mining benefactor had run afoul of environmental regulations. In 1996, the mine twice failed biomonitoring tests designed to protect water quality in the Caney Fork for fish and wildlife. Mine discharge "failed two acute tests for toxicity to Ceriodaphnia dubia," a species of water flea, according to a mine permit analysis by Tennessee environmental authorities. "The discharge of industrial wastewater from Outfall #001 [the Caney Fork effluent] contains toxic metals (copper and zinc)," the analysis stated. "The combined effect of these pollutants may be detrimental to fish and aquatic life."

Tests for The Wall Street Journal by two independent Tennessee laboratories, conducted in September 1999 and this month, showed trace amounts of zinc and other metals in the Caney Fork that were in compliance with federal standards. But soil tests revealed what one lab called problematic "large quantities" of heavy metals in the riverbank soil downstream of the Caney Fork effluent. In both sets of tests, samples of water and soil were provided to the labs by the Journal.

Soil samples drawn from the mine effluent and downstream "contained large quantities of Barium, Iron, and Zinc, as well as smaller amounts of Arsenic, Chromium and Lead," Warner Laboratories found in September. "The soil from each of these sites seems to have some problems according to our findings. The levels of Barium, Iron and Zinc far exceed any report limit [a detection threshold within the testing system] and it should be noted that these results are extremely high compared to typical soil found in a populated neighborhood."

Tests conducted in June by the Environmental Science Corp. found similar traces of heavy metals in the water and soil. The report found the soil samples to contain relatively high levels of "Barium, Iron, Zinc, and several of the other metals, including Aluminum, Calcium and Magnesium." The ESC report also noted traces of cyanide in some water and soil samples.

Pasminco is not required to test soil along the banks of the Caney Fork. Both labs, while noting anomalies in the soil, believe the results do not warrant concern as environmental hazards. The water and soil clearly are not, however, "as pure as they came," as Mr. Gore demands in "Earth in the Balance."

A 1998 study by the Environmental Working Group, a Washington-based organization, criticized the zinc-mining operation for purchasing a toxic waste that included sulfuric acid and reselling it as fertilizer. The mine buys acid waste from steel plants, uses it as purification agent in zinc processing, and then sells the waste to fertilizer companies, according to a report in the Tennessean, a Nashville newspaper. Most soil scientists say the procedure is safe.

In a valley next to Al Gore Jr.'s farm near Carthage, Tenn., ground limestone left over from zinc mining spreads out like a white blanket.

Tennessee environmentalists disagree. "Clearly, when you spread those types of chemicals around on a farm or on the land, you're going to get a lot of runoff," Brian McGuire, executive director of Tennessee Citizens Action told the Tennessean. "So it's going to get into the water. We're poisoning ourselves."

A Pasminco official noted that the mine has had few violations and works to uphold a "very strict standard" of environmental quality. The Gore campaign did not respond to requests for comment. But some Tennessee residents say Mr. Gore becomes testy when questioned about the zinc mine. Tom Gniewek, a retired chemical engineer from Camden, Tenn., has studied the zinc mine for years and tried to question Mr. Gore about it at town-hall meetings. "He gets real angry," Mr. Gniewek says. "Instead of answering the question, he attacked my motives and accused people like me of vandalizing the earth."

Mr. Gore's original purchase of the zinc-rich land is of some interest as well, shedding light on his long relationship with Mr. Hammer, the former Occidental Petroleum chief. A controversial influence peddler who trafficked in politicians of all stripes and parties, Mr. Hammer pleaded guilty in 1975 to providing hush money in the Watergate scandal.

Mr. Hammer cut a wide swath across Washington from the 1930s until his death in 1990 at 92. His controversial career was marked by decades of profitable business dealings with the Soviet Union, which were closely watched by the FBI. He leapt into the big time by acquiring Libyan oil rights for Occidental Petroleum through what biographer Edward Jay Epstein has characterized as a combination of shrewd business dealings and bribery. After his 1975 conviction, Mr. Hammer spent the rest of his life campaigning for a pardon, which President Bush granted in 1989.

Mr. Hammer cultivated close relationships with many politicians, but he was closest to Mr. Gore's father, a U.S. senator from 1953 until 1971. Mr. Hammer's Occidental Minerals snapped up the zinc-bearing property in 1972. The senior Mr. Gore's farm is on the opposite bank of the Caney Fork. Mr. Hammer paid $160,000, double the only other offer, according to the Washington Post, which first disclosed details of the arrangement during the 1992 presidential campaign.

According to deed documents in Carthage, a year later Mr. Hammer sold the land to the senior Mr. Gore for $160,000, adding the extremely generous $20,000 per year mineral royalty. Ten minutes after that sale, the former senator executed a deed selling the property, including the mineral rights, to his son, the future vice president, for $140,000. Albert Gore Sr. told the Post he kept the first $20,000 royalty for himself, evening up the father-son transaction.

The purpose of the sale appears to have been transferring the annual $20,000 payment from Mr. Hammer to the young Mr. Gore. The Post reported that the "$20,000 a year amounts to $227 an acre, much more than the $30 an acre Occidental Minerals, part of Hammer's oil company, paid the senior Gore and some neighbors a few years before the 1973 arrangement."

In 1992 then-Sen. Gore told the Post that although he had been working for "slave wages" as a newspaper reporter, he quickly came up with a $40,000 down payment from two previous real-estate investments. In 1974, the zinc mine began annual payments of $20,000 to Mr. Gore, an important source of income to the young politician for many years.

After the senior Mr. Gore lost his 1970 Senate re-election bid, Mr. Hammer named him chairman of Island Creek Coal, an Occidental subsidiary, and appointed him to the board of directors of Occidental Petroleum. The late Mr. Gore's estate is conservatively valued at $1.5 million, including a block of Occidental stock worth between $250,000 and $500,000. The vice president is executor and trustee of his father's estate, with "sole discretion" to manage a trust on his mother's behalf.

As Albert Gore Jr. rose through the political ranks, Mr. Hammer continued to assist him. The Hammer family and corporations made donations up to the legal maximum in all of Mr. Gore's campaigns, according to Mr. Hammer's former personal assistant, Neil Lyndon, writing in London's Daily Telegraph. Mr. Gore regularly dined with Mr. Hammer and Occidental lobbyists in Washington, Mr. Lyndon wrote. "Separately and together, the Gores sometimes used Hammer's luxurious private Boeing 727 for journeys and jaunts." The former Hammer aide noted that the "profound and prolonged involvement between Hammer and Gore has never been revealed or investigated."

Mr. Hammer was famous for his dealings with the Soviet Union, and received a humanitarian award in Moscow in 1987 from International Physicians Against Nuclear War. Mr. Gore, who had been elected to the Senate in 1984, delivered a speech to the same convention, saying conventional arms should be cut along with nuclear weapons. As vice president, Mr. Gore became the Clinton administration point man on relations with Russia.

Mr. Gore would be well served to get the facts out about his relationship with Mr. Hammer, beginning with the zinc bounty. The issue is bigger than whether there is a pollution problem in Tennessee. When Mr. Gore's zinc riches are at stake, he appears unwilling to live by the standards he sets out for others in "Earth in the Balance."

His record of uncompromising environmental rhetoric seems another instance of the kind of hypocrisy that has dogged his campaign for months. He's been accused of being a slumlord for providing substandard housing to a tenant on a rental unit adjoining his farm. A well-remembered 1996 speech to the Democratic National Convention, invoking his sister's death by lung cancer and attacking the tobacco industry, also contributed to his reputation for slippery sanctimony when his close ties to Tennessee tobacco were revealed. And of course Mr. Gore has been sharply criticized for posturing on campaign finance reform while under investigation for possible fund-raising crimes in the 1996 campaign.

No mention of the zinc mine appears in "Earth in the Balance," on Mr. Gore's campaign Web site or in his speeches. At this point the story of the Tennessee farm, the zinc mine, the politician and the influence peddler is largely one of cant and hypocrisy. This is not a hanging crime in the political world, but the vice president, among others, might note that Bill Clinton's problems also began with a murky land deal and a shady financier.

The elder Gore made many a mark upon the American landscape in the course of his career; he was a kingpin in the establishment of the mighty Tennessee Valley Authority, or TVA, effort to socialize electrical power and a sponsor of the $50 billion National Highway Defense Act of 1956, the largest public-works project ever undertaken. He initially acquired substantial wealth as Hammer's partner in the cattle business.

Interesting Bilderberg - Gore connection with Brooks Hays:

Baptist's in Soviet Russia? Come on!:

Quote

Last year he made a brief non-political trip to Russia to communicate With Soviet Baptists.

Lawrence Brooks Hays was a twentieth-century political, civic, and religious leader in Arkansas. He was one of the most influential members of the state’s congressional delegation after World War II and one of the few laymen to serve as the president of the Southern Baptist Convention. While he often referred to himself as a politician, his wife thought the label that best described him was “Arkansas social worker.”

Hays accepted a series of presidential appointments, first to the board of the Tennessee Valley Authority under Eisenhower, then as Undersecretary of State for Congressional Affairs and Special Assistant to presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson.

WASHINGTON--(BP)--Capitol Hill observers here predicted quick confirmation by the U. S. Senate of the nomination of Brooks Hays as a director of Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA).

President Eisenhower announced he would nominate the former Arkansas Congressman, now serving as president of the Southern Baptist Convention, to fill an unexpired term running about one year. Hays would succeed Frank J. Helch of Lexington, Ky., who resigned before the end of his term. It was not known Whether Hays would seek reappointment to a full nine-year term on the TVA board in 1960.

In the position on the three-member TVA board, Hays office would be in Knoxville, Tenn. Since his Congressional term ended earlier this year, Hays has devoted his time to private law practice here, frequent lectures throughout the country, and his responsibilities as SEC president.

He emphasized to his Baptist friends that the TVA appointment would not impair his service in Baptist office. His term as president of the Southern Baptist Convention expires May 22 and there will be very little overlapping of time between his TVA and Baptist offices even with fast Senate confirmation. During his 16 years of Congressional service, Hays was noted for his interest in the welfare of the nation that transcended his party (Democrat) allegiance.

The TVA director-nominate recently returned to the United States from a Visit to Latin-American nations where he toured Baptist mission points. Last year he made a brief non-political trip to Russia to communicate With Soviet Baptists.

During the past year he has been active in helping Baptists of America seek ways they can work toward world peace. At his suggestion the Southern Baptist Convention last year named a Committee on World Peace. The Committee, of which Hays is a member, will report May 22 to the 1959 session of the SBC at Louisville, Ky.

Another member of the peace committee has been Sen. Albert Gore (D., Tenn.), who comes from the heart of the TVA region. Gore, also a Baptist, said of Hays' TVA nomination, "I believe he is a friend of the TVA concept. He is a man of ability and integrity.

WORLD PEACE COMMITTEE---These are the members of the Committee on World Peaoe of the Southern Baptist Convention. Appointed at Houston during the 1958 session, the committee has the responsibility for finding ways in which Southern Baptists may help bring about world peace.

seated from left, A. C. Miller of Nashville, executive secretary, Christian Life Commission; Walter Pope Binns, chairman, president of William Jewell College, Liberty, Mo.; Convention President Brooks Hays, who called for appointment of a committee.

They are standing beneath a portrait of the late Dr. George W. Truett, Dallas, former Convention president.

Members of the committee not present are Joe Culpepper, Kansas City, Mo., layman, and Sen. Albert Gore (D., Tenn.).--BaptistPress Photo.

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Behold, happy is the man whom God correcteth: therefore despise not thou the chastening of the Almighty: For he maketh sore, and bindeth up: he woundeth, and his hands make whole ; He shall deliver thee in six troubles: yea, in seven there shall no evil touch thee. - Job 5

CUPERTINO, California—March 19, 2003—Apple® today announced that Albert Gore Jr., the former Vice President of the United States, has joined the Company’s Board of Directors. Mr. Gore was elected at Apple’s board meeting today.

“Al brings an incredible wealth of knowledge and wisdom to Apple from having helped run the largest organization in the world—the United States government—as a Congressman, Senator and our 45th Vice President. Al is also an avid Mac user and does his own video editing in Final Cut Pro,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “Al is going to be a terrific Director and we’re excited and honored that he has chosen Apple as his first private sector board to serve on.” ...As a member of the U.S. Congress 25 years ago, he popularized the term “Information Superhighway,” and was instrumental in fighting for federal funds to assist in building what later became the Internet. He has remained an active leader in technology—launching a public/private effort to wire every classroom and library in America to the Internet.

Mr. Gore serves as a Senior Advisor to Google, Inc. He is also a visiting professor at the University of California Los Angeles, Fisk University and Middle Tennessee State University.

Mr. Gore received his B.A. in Government with honors from Harvard University in 1969, and attended the Vanderbilt University School of Religion and the Vanderbilt University School of Law.

Sitting in the front row with the other outside directors, he had to bite his tongue as two pro-environment proposals were voted down and a gadfly named Shelton Ehrlich took the mic to call him a "laughingstock."

"The glaciers have not melted," Ehrlich said, referring to Gore's frequent warnings about the effects of global warming. "If his advice he gives to Apple is as faulty as his views on the environment then he doesn't need to be re-elected." (link)

But Gore is amply rewarded for serving on Apple's board. Last year he received in cash and stock options the equivalent of $436,372. The 10,000 options he was granted in 2008 are now worth nearly $750,000.

And according to an SEC filing published Friday, he has just received another 9,397 options -- more than any other director -- in addition to 990 restricted shares. Net value of last week's haul, including those restricted shares: more than $227,000 at Apple's closing price of $204.62.

Al Gore, the former US vice-president,has always had a knack for picking the next hot tip. He backed Google before its stockmarket debut and put money into Apple. He has also invested in organic food, mainly through Whole Foods, which owns Fresh & Wild.

His investment firm, Generation Investment Management, has offices in London, Sydney and New York. Sustainable businesses in which he or the firm has invested include:

A federal review began in spring and has found various connections including the service of Al Gore on both boards of directors.

The resignation of Google's chief executive Eric Schmidt from Apple's board of directors may not be enough to satisfy the Federal Trade Commission, which has been investigating the interlocking relationships between Apple and Google.

The FTC plans to continue its investigation, which began in earnest in the spring, according to media reports.

A review of the directors' boards of both firms finds various connections between the two firms. Former Genentech CEO Arthur Levinson, for example, is a director of both companies, as was Schmidt.

Former Vice President Al Gore, a director of Apple since March of 2003, has also been a long-serving senior advisor to Google. Gore played a key role in the exoneration of complaints on stock option issues that had been made against Apple chief executive Steve Jobs.

Gore has also been a long time partner in Silicon Valley venture capital powerhouse Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers whose partner John Doerr is a member of the Google board.

Another Google director, Ann Mather, came to the company in November of 2005 from movie animation company Pixar where she had been chief financial officer. Pixar was bought in the 1980s by Jobs, who turned it into a successful enterprise before selling it to the Walt Disney Company in 2006. ...

William R. Hearst III joined KPCB in January, 1995, and currently serves on the boards of Akimbo, Applied Minds, Juniper Networks, Oblix, OnFiber, and RGB Networks.

In addition to his portfolio company boards, he is also a director of the Hearst Corporation and Hearst-Argyle Television. Hearst is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a trustee of: The Hearst Foundation, Carnegie Institution of Washington, Mathematical Sciences Research Institute, California Academy of Sciences, and Grace Cathedral in San Francisco. Will Hearst was Editor and Publisher of the San Francisco Examiner from 1984 until 1995. He is a 1972 graduate of Harvard University, holding an AB degree in Mathematics.

Al Gore is chairman of Current TV, an Emmy award winning, independently owned cable and satellite television nonfiction network for young people based on viewer-created content and citizen journalism. He also serves as chairman of Generation Investment Management, a firm that is focused on a new approach to sustainable investing.Al Gore is a member of the board of directors of Apple and a senior adviser to Google. He is a Visiting Professor at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and chairs the Alliance for Climate Protection, a non-profit organization designed to help solve the climate crisis....He is the author of the bestsellers Earth in the Balance and An Inconvenient Truth and is the subject of an Oscar-winning documentary. Al Gore is the co-winner, with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for “informing the world of the dangers posed by climate change.” He and his wife, Tipper, live in Nashville, Tennessee. They have four children and three grandchildren.

http://www.kpcb.com/news/articles/2007_11_12.htmlAbout Generation Investment ManagementGeneration Investment Management LLP is dedicated to long-term investing, integrated sustainability research, and client alignment. It is an independent, private, owner-managed partnership established in 2004 and with offices in London and Washington, D.C. Generation aims to buy high quality companies at attractive prices that will deliver superior long-term investment returns. Sustainability research plays an important role in forming its views on the quality of the business, the quality of management and valuation. Its performance fees align its interests with that of its clients by being based on long term performance.

The company is chaired by former Vice President of the United States and Nobel Peace Prize Winner, Al Gore, whilst its Managing Partner is David Blood, the former CEO of Goldman Sachs Asset Management. Generation Investment Management LLP is authorized and regulated in the United Kingdom by the Financial Services Authority.

About KPCBKleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers is leading the venture community to invest in and accelerate Green technology solutions and policy innovations. The firm has been active in Greentech initiatives since 1999. KPCB has committed more than $200 million to ventures across the globe that offer green technology products and services, such as better biofuels, renewable energy generation, cleaner transportation, improved energy storage, and higher energy efficiency technologies.

More than 150 of the firm's portfolio companies have gone public. Many other ventures have achieved success through mergers and acquisitions. The firm has offices in Menlo Park, California, Beijing, China and Shanghai, China.

Levinson quits Google's board, stays with Apple, amid FTC scrutinyBy Scott M. Fulton, III | Published October 12, 2009, 3:59 PM ...newly appointed FTC regulators sought to eliminate the perception of possible collusion between technology companies...An FTC investigation into the relationship between the two companies was ongoing up until today. Though it has not officially called off the investigation,

FTC chairman Jon Leibowitz issued this statement today: "Google, Apple, and Mr. Levinson should be commended for recognizing that overlapping board members between competing companies raise serious antitrust issues and for their willingness to resolve our concerns without the need for litigation."...Mr. Gore has leveraged his position at Google to help drive some pro-active policy efforts, including The Climate Project. Launched just two weeks ago, the site contains tools based on the Google Earth platform to help individuals study the effects of global climate change, and Google has certainly supplied the former presidential candidate with more help than just the platform.

It is the extreme right wing which has used the tool of guilt-by-association to draw an extremely elastic perimeter around Mr. Gore, Google, the "climate change underground," the "net neutrality movement" (whose founding principle, ironically, was created in an effort to prevent Google from buying premium bandwidth), and political action group MoveOn.org co-founded by Mr. Gore. Recent ultra-conservative blogs point to the fact that Mr. Gore mentioned the SavetheInternet Coalition in a 2007 book, as an indicator that he is actually that project's "ringleader."...http://precursorblog.com/node/409Writes conservative commentator Scott Cleland, "Where are the disclosures in the book that most all of Mr. Gore's multi-ten million dollar net worth is in Google shares -- constituting a huge undisclosed conflict of interest on the issue of net neutrality?"

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Behold, happy is the man whom God correcteth: therefore despise not thou the chastening of the Almighty: For he maketh sore, and bindeth up: he woundeth, and his hands make whole ; He shall deliver thee in six troubles: yea, in seven there shall no evil touch thee. - Job 5

Davis Guggenheim was an Executive Producer on “Training Day” and has directed a feature film called “Gossip,” both for Warner Bros. His television directing credits include pilots that were ordered to series for CBS and TNT, as well as episodes of “Numbers,” “The Shield,” “Alias,” “24,” and such critically acclaimed programs as “NYPD Blue,” “ER," and “Party of Five." He was Producer and Director of the Emmy Award winning HBO series “Deadwood.”

In 1999, Guggenheim undertook an ambitious project documenting the challenging first year of several novice public school teachers. The result of this intensive immersion into Los Angeles’ public school system is two documentary films: “The First Year” and “Teach”. Both films were made to address the tremendous need for qualified teachers in California and nationwide, to create awareness of the crisis as well as inspire the next generation to become teachers.

“The First Year” premiered on PBS in 2002 and was selected among eleven thousand candidates to receive a Peabody Award, the most prestigious award given in the field of broadcast television. In addition, it received the Grand Jury Prize at the Full Frame Film Festival, the premiere documentary film festival in the United States. Guggenheim’s other documentary films include “Norton Simon: A Man and His Art,” produced for permanent exhibition at the Norton Simon Museum, and “JFK and the Imprisoned Child,” produced for permanent exhibition at the John F. Kennedy Library. A graduate of Brown University, Guggenheim moved to Los Angeles to pursue filmmaking. He joined the independent Outlaw Productions, working closely with filmmakers there, including director Steven Soderbergh on the groundbreaking 1989 film “Sex Lies and Videotape,” and co-producing other feature films with Outlaw.

Laurie David (Producer)

Laurie David is devoted to stopping global warming.

She has recently launched the Stop Global Warming Virtual March with Senator John McCain and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. that is engaging religious leaders, labor unions, business leaders, elected officials from all sides of the aisle, and every day Americans to urge the United States to address the ticking time bomb that is global warming.

In addition to the Stop Global Warming Virtual March, David is producing several other projects that will help to bring the issue of global warming into mainstream popular culture -- including executive producing the comedy special, Earth to America! for TBS, the first cause oriented primetime special in a decade, which aired November 20, 2005, and a HBO feature documentary called Too Hot Not to Handle on the effects of global warming in the United States, airing on Earth Day, April 22, 2006. She has also appeared this year on Oprah, the Fox News special The Heat is On, Good Morning America, Nightline.

As a trustee of the Natural Resources Defense Council and a founding member of the Detroit Project, David has spear-headed numerous public education and action campaigns urging Congress and auto-makers to raise fuel efficiency standards. She has been outspoken promoter of hybrid vehicles since they were first available in the marketplace. With the Detroit Project she produced several television commercials that helped ignite a national debate about gas guzzling SUVs and how driving these impacts our national security and makes us more dependant on oil. Two years have gone by since those commercials aired and SUV sales have steadily declined as the popularity of hybrid vehicles continues to explode.

In 2003, David was honored by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s Riverkeeper organization. When presenting her with the award, Kennedy referred to Ms. David as his "environmental hero." That same year, she was also honored by Los Angeles' Children's Nature Institute for her commitment to the environmental education of young children. Rolling Stone also listed her as one of the top twenty five leaders fighting global warming. NRDC just awarded her their prestigious Forces for Nature Award for 2006.

In January of 2004, NRDC opened the David Family Environmental Action Center. Endowed by the David family, the Center encompasses much of David's passion and dedication for the environment and activism to protect it. It features museum-quality exhibits on issues such as global warming, ocean pollution, everyday toxins, and green building solutions.

Before working full time on environmental and political issues, David had a distinguished career in entertainment spanning two coasts. She began her career in New York City as a talent coordinator for the David Letterman show. Four years later she left to start her own management company, representing many of today's top comedians as well as comedy writers. She also produced several comedy specials for HBO, Showtime, MTV, and Fox Television. Upon moving to Los Angeles, Ms. David became vice president of comedy development for a division of Fox Broadcasting and developed sitcoms for Twentieth Century Television.

Married to comedian Larry David, they live in Los Angeles with their two daughters.

Lawrence Bender (Producer) Lawrence Bender has been working as a film producer for fifteen years. His films have been honored with nineteen Oscar® nominations including two for Best Picture. Among the many movies he has produced is “Good Will Hunting” (1997), which won Oscars® for Best Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor, and “Pulp Fiction” which won the Oscar for Best Screenplay.

In 2000, Bender started his television partnership with Kevin Brown, where they have developed and produced pilots for all of the major networks and cable channels, along with longform movies for television. In addition to his work in television and film, Bender has had success producing commercials and music videos with the production company A Band Apart. A Band Apart has filmed hundreds of commercials and music videos garnering many awards.

Bender has parlayed his vast experience in the film industry into the world of political and social activism. He founded the Detroit Project with Arianna Huffington and Laurie David which connected the dots between our energy consumption and national security. He also travelled to the Middle East where he met with international leaders, including members of the Israeli Knesset, in Egypt with President Mubarak, and in the West Bank in Ramallah with Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas.

He is on the board of the Creative Coalition and Rock the Vote; he is a member of the executive forum of the NRDC and the Pacific Council, and is also on the advisory board to the Dean at Harvard JFK School of Government.

Scott Z. Burns (Producer) Scott Z. Burns studied English Literature at the University of Minnesota where he received a nomination for the prestigious Rhodes Scholarship. He went on to work in advertising as a writer, creative director and commercial director. Burns was part of the creative team responsible for the famous "Got Milk?" campaign-- as well as campaigns for Major League Baseball, MTV and various environmental groups. Along with Arianna Huffington, Laurie David and Lawrence Bender, Scott Burns founded and created the advertising for The Detroit Project. His work in advertising has been recognized by the Clio Awards, the Cannes Film Festival and the New York Film Festival.

In 1999, Burns joined the writing staff of the ABC series “Wonderland,” produced by Imagine Entertainment and named by Time Magazine as one of the year's Ten Best New Shows. He has penned numerous screenplays including Section Eight's “The Informant,” an adaptation of Kurt Eichenwald's novel, with Steven Soderbergh attached to direct and Matt Damon to star. He also wrote “Read My Lips” for Paramount and Columbia Pictures' “Big If,” an adaptation of Mark Costello's novel, with Peter Saraf and Edward Saxon producing.

Burns recently directed his first feature, “PU-239,” for HBO, Beacon Pictures and Section Eight. Scott also wrote the script, which is based on a short story by Ken Kalfus.

Jeff Skoll (Executive Producer)

Jeff Skoll founded Participant Productions in January 2004 and serves as Chairman and CEO. He most recently served as executive producer on the films “Good Night, and Good Luck,” “North Country” and “Syriana.”

Skoll has been a leader in technology and philanthropy for many years.

In 1996, Skoll joined eBay as its first President and first full-time employee, and developed the business plan that the company still follows.

In the months before eBay went public in 1998, Skoll led the company's effort to give back to the community, creating the eBay Foundation through an allocation of pre-IPO shares, an innovation that inspired a wave of similar commitments nationwide.

But Skoll didn't stop there. In 1999, he launched his own philanthropic organization, the Skoll Foundation for which he serves as chief visionary and chairman. He created the foundation in alignment with his core belief that it is in everyone's interest to shift the overwhelming imbalance between the "haves" and "have-nots." The foundation takes up this challenge by focusing on social entrepreneurs - people who couple innovative ideas with extraordinary determination, tackling the world's toughest problems to make things better for us all.

Skoll also serves on the Board of Directors for the eBay Foundation, the Community Foundation Silicon Valley, and is a member of the Advisory Board of the Stanford Graduate School of Business, among others. He holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Toronto, and an M.B.A. from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

In April 2005, Jeff launched the Gandhi Project in partnership with Silicon Valley entrepreneur Kamran Elahian. Working with Palestinian voice actors and artists, an award-winning director dubbed the epic film “Gandhi” into Arabic. It is being screened throughout Palestine in order to advance civil society goals of peaceful resistance, self-reliance, economic development and local empowerment, and plans are under way to expand screenings throughout the Arab world.

Lesley Chilcott (Co- Producer) Lesley started her career at MTV Networks working on large multi-camera shows such as the Video Music Awards, Half-Hour Comedy Hour, MTV 10, various music specials, and was part of the creation of the first MTV Movie Awards. She left MTV with it’s then Vice President of Production to launch Tenth Planet Productions. After Tenth Planet Lesley moved on to producing music videos and commercials.

Lesley is part of the Detroit Project, an action campaign that promotes hybrid and fuel-efficient vehicles. She has produced several commercials for the Detroit Project that have helped illustrate the irony of how driving gas guzzling SUVs makes us even more dependant on oil.

Jeff Skoll was born in Montreal, Quebec into a Jewish family,[2][3] his mother a teacher[4] and his father a chemical company owner who sold industrial chemicals.[5] The family settled in Toronto in the late seventies.

When Jeff Skoll was fourteen his father was diagnosed with cancer which prompted him to discuss with his son how much he regretted not having had the time to do everything he had planned in life. A keen reader, Skoll was influenced by authors such as Aldous Huxley and Ayn Rand and intended to become an author writing motivational books and books on tackling the world's problems....He left Canada in 1993 to study a Masters of Business Administration at Stanford Business School, graduating in 1995. After Stanford he went to work at Knight-Ridder where he was working on internet projects for the publishing company.

EBAY

In 1996 Skoll met eBay's founder Pierre Omidyar who hired him as the company's first president and first full-time employee. While eBay was already profitable at the time Skoll joined, he wrote the business plan that eBay followed from its emergence as a start-up to a great success. He remained President until the arrival of Meg Whitman in January 1998 when he became Vice President, Strategic Planning and Analysis until back problems necessitated his departure from full-time employment at the company.

In 1998, he championed the creation of the eBay Foundation which was allocated pre-IPO stock now worth $32 million. Once eBay's second largest stockholder, behind Omidyar, he subsequently cashed out a portion of his company holdings, yielding him around $2 billion.

Skoll is also the founder, chairman and owner of Participant Media (formerly Participant Productions), a Los Angeles based media company he created to fund feature films and documentaries that promote social values while still being commercially viable

An Inconvenient Truth won two Oscars in 2007 and has been credited with extending the public debate over climate change. Other films in 2007 included Charlie Wilson's War with Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts

The company also has publishing and television divisions and operates Takepart.com, an online site catering to social activists.

Skoll owns a Tesla Roadster from Tesla Motors, a battery electric sportscar with a 250 mile range, the third Tesla off the line P2/VINF003.[8] He is also an investor in the company.

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Behold, happy is the man whom God correcteth: therefore despise not thou the chastening of the Almighty: For he maketh sore, and bindeth up: he woundeth, and his hands make whole ; He shall deliver thee in six troubles: yea, in seven there shall no evil touch thee. - Job 5

Within a year, Occidental had struck "one of the most prolific deposits of oil in the world." By 1967, the six-day war which led to the shut-in of the Suez canal caused Libyan oil resources to become more valuable than before. At which point, Occidental was in possession of three billion barrels of recoverable reserves.

Armand Hammer was one of the odder, more odious characters of American business and politics, "famous" chiefly because he was rich enough to promote his mammoth ego. He has met his match in investigative writer Edward Jay Epstein, who performs the ultimate unmasking of a man who deceived, even betrayed, his country, his family and the hired toadies who posed as his friends.

The public persona that Hammer polished, at great expense, was that of a renegade oilman who made billions from Libyan oil

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Behold, happy is the man whom God correcteth: therefore despise not thou the chastening of the Almighty: For he maketh sore, and bindeth up: he woundeth, and his hands make whole ; He shall deliver thee in six troubles: yea, in seven there shall no evil touch thee. - Job 5

Al Gore’s Current TV was never popular with viewers, but it was a hit where it counted: with cable and satellite providers. When he co-founded the channel in 2005, Mr. Gore managed to get the channel piped into tens of millions of households — a huge number for an untested network — through a combination of personal lobbying and arm-twisting of industry giants.

He called on those skills again after deciding in December to sell Current TV to Al Jazeera for $500 million. To preserve the deal — and the estimated $100 million he would personally receive — he went to some of those same distributors, who were looking for an excuse to drop the low-rated channel, and reminded them that their contracts with Current TV called it a news channel. Were the distributors going to say that an American version of Al Jazeera didn’t qualify, possibly invoking ugly stereotypes of the Middle Eastern news giant?

“The lawyers for the carriers couldn’t find their way around it,” said a person briefed on the negotiations who described them on condition of anonymity.

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Behold, happy is the man whom God correcteth: therefore despise not thou the chastening of the Almighty: For he maketh sore, and bindeth up: he woundeth, and his hands make whole ; He shall deliver thee in six troubles: yea, in seven there shall no evil touch thee. - Job 5

Behold, happy is the man whom God correcteth: therefore despise not thou the chastening of the Almighty: For he maketh sore, and bindeth up: he woundeth, and his hands make whole ; He shall deliver thee in six troubles: yea, in seven there shall no evil touch thee. - Job 5